Nights in Egypt
by Q u e e n V a m p
Summary: In the capitol of the Lands of Fire: there was a throne to the world, a proud Pharaoh seated upon it, a haunty Prince with a devilish plan and an exotic dancer caught between it all. These are the Nights in Egypt.
1. Chapter 1

_**Nights in Egypt  
**_

_**Chapter 1: Dancers of the Night**_

* * *

Katara gazed into the mirror and dipped her make-up brush into the bowl of blood-red paint before beginning the long process of her dancer's mask. Like a geisha's it highlighted all the features of a dancer's face, but the curled stripes reminded her of the tiger-seals back in her homeland.

As a young girl she was taken from the cold wastelands of the South Pole and brought into the even harsher deserts of Egypt.

Brought to a crowded slave market she had been lucky to be bought by Ursa, Queen of Egypt, but she wasn't taken into the safe confides of the palace. There she would have been a slave and at the mercy of the royal family. Instead Ursa gave her to a friend of hers, Ming, who owned the Midnight Dancers; where she'd work as a maid instead of being raised as a slave.

Ming was nice too. A fair middle aged woman who took care of her well and gave her small jobs to do.

Days and weeks dragged on and Katara one day, while dusting, watched the older girls in the house dance. The movements reminded her of the few Waterbending moves she'd learned from her teacher back in the South Pole, so she decided to try it. Ming had come to yell at Katara for not finishing her chores, but had stumbled across her dancing. Immediately she'd put Katara in classes with the other girls and when she'd done well at her first performance, when she was thirteen, Ming had been so proud she adopted Katara.

The room she was given was larger than most dancer's, but once Suki and Ty Lee joined the house she was more than willing to share and help them through the tearful first nights in the quiet house. And in time they too proved to be skilled dancers as well. Suki told her she came from a land where women were warriors and she had been their leader of a group called the Kyoshi Warriors. Though she was captured on a mission and brought here. Ty Lee had hesitated about her past but after performing at a rich lord's house, and messing the whole routine because she didn't want to be seen, she confessed that her parents had disowned her and she lived on the streets, dancing for money, until Ming found her.

Now as Katara readies herself for her performance at the palace with the others, though she'd be leading –Ming liked to spoil her like that-, for the first time in a long time she felt nervous.

Her face had been finished to complete perfection.

The red paint made a bold outline on her dark skinned face and body in the tiger stripe pattern that followed down arms, shoulders, back and the exposed skin on her legs.

The face was down more simply; with a curled stripe on either cheekbone and at both corners of her scarlet dyed lips, then a single spot above the bridge of her nose. Her blue eyes were surrounded by liner that had to be done with a steady hand with black paint and then her eyelids were powdered red.

Standing from the pillow in front of her make-up table she took her full image in the mirror across the room.

The outfit, she must say, bared too much skin. The top was without straps and tied into place with a silk red bow on the bottom and the skirt was thick with elaborate gold and black designs and had a long cut running up the side to mid-thigh.

Ending the outrageous outfit was a long, red silk fabric that attached to the golden shackles on each of their wrist. It had looked like wings in the rehearsal. It was from an old Egyptian myth that had something to do with wings –she'd been too lazy to read into it, but the observers would known what it symbolized.

Jewelry was overdone as well. The two gold hoops in each ear, the bangles around the ankles, a gold rings on her forearms and the heavy golden necklace with a ruby dangling from it.

Suki stood next and smiled.

"It feels like the Kyoshi war make-up I use to wear." She'd said once, which was why she took as long as she did to put it on, to remember the times when she fought instead of entertained the enemy.

Ty Lee had been ready for the past hour, too bored to do much of anything else around the house.

Ming entered their room and smiled brightly. Her make-up was much lighter than their but she still painted her lips and out lined her eyes. "You all look beautiful, come this way." Turning the three girl followed her, careful not to step on the trails of their 'wings' as they shuffled down the corridor, ignoring the glares given to them by the jealous girls who wished to leave with them.

Piling into a carriage pulled by a rhino-horse Ming was sure to lay down the rules as she did every time they left the house.

"I cannot stress this enough, you are dancers not whores. You will not have any man lure you away to his chambers is that under stood?" Katara gently touched Ming's hand in a comforting gesture.

"Don't worry Madam we'll be on our best behavior. I'll watch them and we'll stay together." Ming smiled, although she was kind to Katara she was harsh to everyone else and most saw it as unfair as others saw a mother-daughter relationship.

"Song has fallen pregnant." She gossiped and the girls leaned in. "With we fear to be the King's bastard child. She won't tell us whom she was with but the King has been known to take woman to his chambers." Ming hung her head and Katara continued to comfort her.

"Isn't he married?" Suki asked, having not grown up in Egypt the politic were still confusing to her. Such as the Kings newly embraced ability to take mistresses if he didn't want the Queen's company.

"Yes, Queen Ursa has given him two children; a son, Prince Zuko, and a daughter, Princess Azula." Ty Lee answered then thought for a moment. "Even if the Queen were to find out about his affairs she'd do nothing to Song, she's too nice. If they were to meet she probably wouldn't even speak to her."

"That doesn't matter now." Ming said. "What's done is done and I'll be speaking to the guards about having men approach you. Song is on her way to a peasant's village where she'll live the rest of her life with her child. I just hope that puts a clear warning in for all the other girls."

* * *

**Hello! Zutara Fic!  
It's two in the morning so I apologize of any spelling mistakes, I will fix them later.**

**Yes, the Midnight Dancers are a mix of geishas, belly dancers and other cultures but still I think I did a good job and I really wanted a story to take place in Egypt, so I'll be rearranging the backgrounds a bit and I'm thinking the Earth Kingdom should be China.**

**Zuko's POV next chapter.  
Give'me some love!**

**~QueenVamp**


	2. Chapter 2

_**Nights in Egypt  
**_

_**Chapter 2: Pharaoh Ozai**_

* * *

Rumors of Pharaoh Oazi's affairs were starting to get out and Prince Zuko worried his mother would hear them, though he was sure she already knew.

Ozai had acknowledged the presence of the three new babies born into the world with royal blood in their veins. He'd even named them, a king always names his heirs, and although he hadn't been there for their births the mothers lived good lives as servants in other various households surrounding the palace.

Though the newest one of the bunch, however, had yet to be given her gifts and new household. She had been a dancer who performed during a banquet and when Ozai's page went to contact her they found that her master, Ming; a friend of his mothers', had sent her away to remove the shame from her house.

Ozai had been furious but was getting even.

He ordered for Ming's finest dancers to come and perform for him tonight for another needless banquet.

His sister, Azula, was not smiling on the gossip that had begun to spread either and was actually quite furious about it –for once they agreed on something-, but she wasn't going to speak badly of their father, she admired him too much to do that.

Henceforth, she wanted the throne.

"Ozai is taking this too far." The Prince went to confide in his wise Uncle Iroh who always seemed to have an answer to his problems, but this time...

"You love your mother, Prince Zuko; you show her great loyalty by coming to me, but alas there is not I can do. What my brother does I cannot control and if he wishes to take mistresses there are no laws forbidding him to do so." Iroh frowned as Zuko's jaw locked.

"Someone should put poison in his drink. Uncle, do you realize how many lives he's already destroyed and the countless others he has killed?"

"Easy, Zuko," Iroh whispered grabbing his arm, glancing around the disserted corridor nervously. "You remember what happened last time you spoke like that."

He did, in fact.

He remembered it every day.

Because the punishment for speaking of his father's assassination stared back at him every morning he looked in the mirror. The ugly burn mark that marred the left side of his pale face.

"Yes I do." Pushing Iroh's hand off his arm he stared for the door. "I'm going to take a nap, tonight's the banquet." _And there shall be no more half-siblings to tarnish our family name._

* * *

**If you are still reading this you are my favorite people of the day!**

**Although todays my dad's B-Day I was still able to get this chapter up! And I fixed my mistakes in the last chapter as well...^^**

**Katara's POV next chapter.  
Give'me some love!**

**~QueenVamp**


	3. Chapter 3

**_Nights in Egypt_**

**_Chapter 3: The Party_**

* * *

Katara stood in front of her two friends and took in the view of the palace courtyard where the banquet was being held from behind the thick red curtains.

The courtyard was square with tall, thick sand stone walls lined with eager guards. Torches lined the walls creating an eerie glow around the enclosure, illuminating the red silk that decorated the long table. People sat behind the table as servants came out of seemingly nowhere place mutable dishes of food before the royal family and their 'closest' friends.

The Pharaoh sat tall surrounded by his wife and children, laughing and languidly picking food off his golden plate. Every now and then his eyes would wander to the stage, impatience for them to begin, a smothering lustful gold.

Gold met blue and he smirked at her. Katara quickly closed her peephole and shuddered. The rumors were true, she knew it. Song was banished from the House and pregnant with the King's son or daughter; she didn't want to be next. Oh, Gods she prayed he wouldn't take interest in her. She had built a life here in Egypt, her name was known for her exotic dancing. She didn't want it to be tarnished by the Pharaoh.

Ming stepped on to the stage.

Katara released a deep breath and got into her dancing stance.

"Your Highness, ladies and gentlemen." Her voice was loud and calling, bring all eyes on her. "Tonight I am proud to present my prized dancers, who will perform the _Desert Night _dance."

People alluded. Ming walked off. The music started –a haunty seductive beat. The curtains drew and the three spun out, dangerously close to the edge stage, but kept their balance, kicking up their left leg and spinning back into lazy circles.

Katara and her friends moved rhythmically, almost like Waterbending –Katara had to be sure she would accidentally bend the water; she'd be taken away by the guards for sure. Her hidden talents that she never practiced anymore since Ty Lee and Suki moved into her room, she didn't dare tell her friends either.

They spun again and the three met in the middle of the stage. Raising their right wrist and connecting them, they began to move in a circle and a singer's crystal voice chimed over the music, telling the story of the three winged woman.

"Ozai is staring at you." Ty Lee warned –keeping her voice low.

"I'll take over your part if you want." Suki whispered. They switched wrist and moved counterclockwise.

"No, I'll deal with it."

The dance ended and they fell into deep bows as the crowd applauded. Ming rushed onto the stage again and they fell back into the room that was prepared for them.

Katara sat at the make-up table and started to furiously scrub away the paint on her legs and arms. Ty Lee stepped forward and sighed.

"Ozai wants us to join the party." Suki said, starting to wash away her own paint.

"Tell him I decline." Seeing that the paint only seemed to smear Katara threw the towel at the wall with everything she had. Suki grabbed the pathetic piece of fabric from the ground and dipped it in the water basin Katara had completely ignored.

"He said he won't take no for an answer…" Ty Lee sighed. "I've seen this before, with my mother, she refused and he _destroyed _her. She can't show her face in public anymore."

Katara had heard this story before.

"I don't care. I'm. Not. Going."

* * *

_I can't believe I'm here. _She thought grimly.

Katara felt uncomfortable in the red silk wrap, but didn't show it, her face stayed an emotionless bust, polite but distant, as they walked through the crowd towards the King's table. Ming's face was dark, her eyes narrow, her mouth a thin line. It was easy to tell she was not pleased at all by the Pharaoh's orders.

They reached the table were booming laughter could be heard and then silence. Katara looked up to see the Pharaoh's eyes on her again and she restrained herself from running away. Far, far away.

She had to be here. If she wanted to be paid. If she wanted to please her mother.

"Your Highness," she said as she and the others slipped into deep bows.

"Ming," Ozai spoke in a commanding voice. "Tell me where you've found such talent."

Ming stepped forward and they didn't rise from their curtseys. "I found Ty Lee dance among peasants for money and I gave her a home. I came across Suki during my trip to the market, the slave traders brought her in from China. Katara, however, has lived with me since she was a young girl; she is my adopted daughter." Ming finished, gesturing to each girl for the Pharaoh to learn their names.

"An adopted noble…You may rise," Katara did slowly, keeping her gaze trained on the ground in front of her. "Please enjoy the party."

"Thank you."

Seeing themselves dismissed Suki and Ty Lee quickly led Katara into a throng of people, whispering harshly. "Oh, Agni. Oh Agni!" Ty Lee squealed. "He's such a _pig. _Did you see the way he looked at you?"

"No, I was trying not to look at him, Ty Lee." Katara growled back. Adjusting the red dress she wore under the wrap, it was the same as Suki and Ty Lee's but they said it looked better on her.

"Let's just stay out of everyone's way and wait until we get _home_ to insult the Pharaoh." Suki suggested nastily glancing back at a soldier. Ty Lee nodded, oblivious to Suki's anger or Katara's silence.

* * *

Katara never felt more alone in her life.

The party was over and here she was, alone, -ALONE- in their dressing room, packing their costumes and the others got the carriage prepared and Ming collected the nightly pay.

She usually liked being alone, she'd sing and loosen the bodice of her tight dress but decided against it.

Her fingers traced across the beautiful rubies of a headdress and then she heard the tapping of footsteps in the hall, loud echoing –the Pharaoh. She quickly darted behind the scarlet curtains, listening, waiting, hoping that it wasn't him and if it was he'd leave.

Fingers slipped through the curtain and Katara's breathing hitched and she pressed herself further against the wall behind her. "Leave me alone!" She screamed and the curtain opened, reviling a pale, muscular chest and a golden necklace. She looked up higher and found herself looking into the Pharaoh's face, or a much younger version of it with a comet shaped scar over his left eye.

The Prince.

Memories of the slave market rushed through her mind. A child of ten years old pulled onto a stage in the middle of the market, half-naked, where a slave driver held her by her newly chopped hair until she screamed, but quickly stopped that when she saw the whip in his hands. Sweaty, smelly men bargaining over her until the Queen stepped forward and bought her, scorning all the other men as she walked from the market with her.

Queen Ursa of Egypt, she saw the same kindness in his eyes.

But of course, she realized. This is her son.

She breathed a sigh of relief, but kept her back glued to the wall behind her, fingers scratching at the chipping paint they must have been trying to cover up. "It's only you…"

"What do you mean by that?" He growled distastefully.

"Nothing, Your Highness, forgive me." She bowed her head and slipped past him. "I heard footsteps and I hid, I'm supposed to be packing." She started to move things into the bags again, more hurriedly, not caring about folding the clothes but more of getting them out of the palace.

"You dancers have a lot of jewelry." He commented after awhile and Katara's hands froze over a ruby studded necklace.

"Um, yes, if some of the dancer's aren't that good Ming likes to flash around jewelry. But tonight's performance required it." She was careful to keep her back to him, her long hair creating a curtain between them as she dropped the necklace into a wooden box, then locked it with a key.

"Look at me." He commanded.

She did so, slowly, eyes climbing to his unflinchingly.

"What are you so scared of?" He asked.

"Your Highness, I don't that's…" He pinned her with a look that said 'murder' and she cracked. "Your father."

His eyebrow rose in muse.

"It was my friend whom he got pregnant and now I can't even see her anymore. She was banished…I have a good life now…no arranged marriages and no one that I don't need. I would never betray Ming, she's been a mother to me."

"Good. I actually thought you'd want to…well, there are some who'd feel honored to have a royal child."

"I think it only puts insult on the queen." She murmured.

* * *

**I'm sorry I put this off for so long!**

**Zuko's POV next chapter  
Review Please!**


	4. Chapter 4

**_Nights in Egypt  
Chapter 4: The Dancer_**

* * *

Zuko stared at her for a long moment.

She was a beautiful woman, a year or two younger than him probably, and without all that paint or his sister breathing down his neck, he'd admit that. Though, he guessed, it was even worse that she was more beautiful up close than she was dancing.

She was the one the Pharaoh wanted; she was the girl who could ruin everything if she made one advance towards him.

Everything she did was a threat to the throne.

She furiously packed away all of the things she and the other girls had brought with them, keeping her face hidden from his.

Something was odd about her eyes, he noted. Zuko had first noticed when she and the other dancers bowed to his father or when she was pressed back against the wall, only a few moments ago she stared at him like she knew him. And her eyes were of an odd color. . .

"Look at me." He said it before he could stop himself.

She obeyed, slowly, not trying to hide that she'd rather be anywhere else right now. Her face was neutral, clashing cruelty and kindness on every turn her face. Her blue eyes clashed the most, like the Nile, they portrayed three different colors of blue that blended into a liquid azure.

Unique. Eye catching. Perfect.

She didn't flinch at the sight of him. Not the scar or his expression. She didn't seem to care at all.

"What are you afraid of?" He felt silly to ask when she stood and held herself as if she feared nothing. No one could touch her, she was power, higher than any monarch.

Then again, all the Midnight Dancers had that aura to them.

Regal and too good for the highest of society.

Now he knew why Azula hated them so much.

"Your Highness," There was that title again. In that 'I-will-try-very-hard-to-remember-you-can-kill-me' tone. "I don't think. . ." She looked at him and yielded once more. "His Majesty, your father."

He stared at her and she gave him a look of annoyance, then explained.

"It was my friend whom he got pregnant and now I can't even see her anymore. She was banished…I have a good life now…no arranged marriages and no one that I don't need. I would never betray Ming, she's been a mother to me."

She was blunt and quick with her speech, not bothering to keep her regal façade or try to impress him with her story. She just said it, as plainly as possible.

"Good. I actually thought you'd want to…" He broke off and tried again. "Well, there are some who'd feel honored to have a royal child."

What she said next surprised him.

"I think it only puts insult on the queen." She murmured, blue eyes lowering back down to the bags.

"You support the Queen?"

Many people did, but with all these snakes slinking around it was hard to tell who was sincere.

"Do you not?" She met his eyes again, a look of fierceness taking place.

"Of course I do, she is my mother." Zuko snapped.

"And she is my queen, I would never betray her nor do anything to harm her. Moreover, her husband's intrest in me I planned to ignore anyway. If you are done with your investigation, I'd like for you to leave, please."

The 'please' didn't sound right.

Zuko took comfort in her words, but didn't care much for her tone.

_Little peasant. . ._

"Can never be too careful. . ." Zuko murmured, exiting the room, brushing his shoulder to hers. He knocked over a jewelry case she'd been packing over as he left and still she did not flinch.

She held herself strong, regal, like a queen.

Like his mother.

* * *

**I'm going to go crazy. I deleted my other Zutara story**

**~QueenVamp**


	5. Chapter 5

_**Nights in Egypt  
Chapter 5: **_**Often Thinking**

* * *

From a far the Pharaoh was quite charming, a regal, strong looking man with an air around him that made everyone in his presence turn their attention to him. His face was so calm, so smooth, so pale.

The creamy color reminded her of her days on the slave markets.

_Their_ pale eager hands roaming over her body for imperfection, testing her before deciding whether to buy her or not –she never was. They were so cold against her heated flesh. _Their _cold sinking into her skin and leaving cold trails that reeked of foreign smells. So pale, so cold, so cruel.

_His strong spider fingered hand wrapped around her throat, squeezing tighter, and tighter, and tighter. Katara's eyes bugged, she gasped and choked against the lack of oxygen. _

_She needed to breath._

_She couldn't._

_It was getting dark._

_And cold._

_No…_

Katara lurched forward in her bed, gasping for breath; her own hands flew to her throat.

She could still feel the man's touch lingering.

She could feel them all.

"Katara?" Ty Lee sat up from her futon next to hers. The acrobat's braid was loose down her back in a messy disarray, the brunette color looking almost silver in the moonlight. She untangled herself from the sheets and crawled over to the startled star dancer. "Hey, 'Tara, what's the matter?"

Ty Lee laid a pale hand on the dark skinned girl's shoulder and Katara jumped, eyes snapping to Ty Lee's hand, then shrugged it off. The last thing she needed was physically contact.

"Why are you to awake?" Suki, having always been a light sleeper thanks to her time as a warrior, sat up on her futon. Her green eyes were wide and alert. Ready for anything.

"It's. . .nothing. . .just a nightmare. Go back to bed."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Ty Lee asked.

"No. . ." Katara sighed; drawing her knees up to her chest she laid her hands on top of them. "Really I'm fine." She gave the best fake smile she could and the other girls nodded, assured, before crawling back into their beds.

Once they'd settled, Katara flipped her hands over. Pressing the backs of them into her knees and staring at the tan palms.

Every line that crisscrossed and stretched had meaning.

She'd learned them just recently in order to impress her male customers.

It was a sideshow, not everyone wanted to see them dance. Most wanted them to sing, or tell stories, or do any little bit they could to entertain them.

With these jobs Katara often played a role; the role of the carefree little tease that refused and _tsk_ed whenever a man begged for her soft touch. She had full rights to as well, this was not a prostitute house –no matter what the nobles said. She was safe here, she could be chaste, she didn't have to do _that _for any man in order to earn her keep, she was so popular already and had so many gifts and went to so many parties. Most of her male clients even started _respecting _her for this, saying one as lovely as she should never be swayed so easily. She was a prize in this house. A jewel in which Ming had polished to be one of the best. She'd become so well-known for this that clients started calling her the Queen of Moonlight.

Her life here was so cushy, she often feared losing it.

But Katara was haunted by nightmares of her past. The little Watertribe princess that was kidnapped and brought into harsh desert lands to be sold as a slave girl for the highest bidder.

Ming once had looked in her eyes and said she could see that scared little girl disappearing into the abyss of her past. That only made Katara want to rid herself of this old self faster, shredding memories and taste and sounds and feelings.

She had a brother, a father, a grandmother, but her mother was dead.

Did they miss her? Did she miss them?

With these questions she didn't dare forget their names.

Such a big softie she was.

* * *

"Well, well, how fairs Her Majesty?" an old man chuckled to himself the next morning as Katara approached. She was dressed a slimming red dress made out of a sort of fabric that cradled her sleek curved hips and breasts, adding to the imagination of the outfit. It was without straps as well, a trend Katara was slowly getting use to, and showed far too much for her liking. With a few modifications to her 'wings' from the previous night she had made a wrap for herself to hang off her shoulders and rest at the bend of her elbows. Her shoes were simple flats that she danced in often; they modeled to her feet and kept her from slipping on the newly polished floors.

Jewelry, however, was a sign of status in the house. The more you wore the higher you were. If you were given a gift by a man and you are still a subordinate or in training you were only to wear that gift in the presence of that customer. If you were higher ranking, like Katara, you got your pick. Today she was simple as possible, dangling ruby earrings that quivered as she walked and a ruby studded hairpin that took her long chocolate curls into a messy, yet elegant, side do that rested on her shoulder.

"Quite well, my liege," Katara bowed.

This man was a member of the royal family after all. She always wondered why he never got angry when others called _her _the queen. In fact, he was probably the one who _started _it.

Such an infuriating, yet funny, old man.

"Right this way." She ushered him into an opposite corridor that was full of conversation and music, where the subordinates worked. Ming said they had to captivate their client's attention, especially if they were in a crowd. That was the most important lesson and many succeeded.

All of them were so many colors and wore such low cut dressed and bright make-up. They sat on the laps of their clients and spoke loudly and left trails of ruby stained kissed on the sides of their necks.

Most glanced up when they saw Katara walk by, straight backed, eyes occasionally glazing over a dancer or two was a look that told them to stop whatever it was they were doing. Her usual client trailed behind her and he waved politely to a few men he knew, they blushed brightly and attempted to hide in the sea of girls.

She was a queen, she realized. To _them _at least.

The sickly, pale men she could stand.

She reached a sliding door at the end of the corridor and waved the man in, glancing back at those who were still staring. She gave a small bow to them, catching most off guard, before disappearing into the room.

The private room consisted of a small stove, five or so plum red silk pillows and murals on the walls. This one, in particular, had a red print of girls dancing across the room. Their movements were tasteful, almost beautiful with their wide sweeps and jumps and turns. The pattern even ran over the door. The north wall, however, was a window. Sliding door, as usual, but it was made of glass.

There wasn't much of a view, she knew. But the desert was the desert and there was nothing she could do about it.

The smell of tea leaves was strong. She and her usual always made tea in here.

He always brought some new kind that he wanted her to try as they talked about politics, the kingdom, the nobles and themselves.

"Ready for another boorish talk with an old man?" He laughed, withdrawing a small tin box.

"You're not boorish, Lord Iroh. I find our conversations amusing." She lowered herself onto a pillow across from him and set a clay kettle off to the side –she had prepared the water for tea earlier.

"Me too." He agreed with a cheesy smile. "Your dancing was lovely last night, I was there, but I didn't get the chance to speak with you."

_Don't remind me. _She sighed once more.

* * *

**TWO THINGS! One: No, I will not give up on this story. Two: Yes, Ozai will persue her HARD.**

**Muwahahah!**

**~QueenVamp**


	6. Chapter 6

_**Nights in Egypt  
Chapter 6: Sundays**_

* * *

Days after the party were far from lazy. For the slaves anyway.

The nobles, including the royal family, rose with the golden glory of the sun and dressed heavily in elaborate robes and ate foods drizzled in chocolate and chatted of the happenings of last night's parties. They enjoyed the sun soaked lazy days on the awning of the palace.

His mother, however, liked to take long rejuvenation baths to keep her youthful appearance and stay in the favor of the Pharaoh. Azula often vented to her friends on her mother's crazy idea to bathing in milk and honey.

Zuko didn't say anything about it.

His mother was beautiful. Her skin was fair. Her cheeks were pale and smooth. Her hair was long and dark, though he knew she often bathed her hair in inky black dyes to keep her hair from turning silver. She wore light, spring time perfume and light make up. She was a natural woman with a happy disposition, but keeping her unfaithful husband's attentions squarely upon her took its toll.

Then there was his uncle, too old to bathe his skin in the sun looked for attention elsewhere. It was rumored that he went to a house or whores outside the golden gates of the capitol, but that was just a rumor. He went to visit a house of _entertainers _and drank tea with an intriguing young woman.

"She's quite lovely, Prince Zuko. I pray that you'll one day meet her." Iroh said the morning before he left to meeting with his _entertainer_.

He shook it off.

"She's foreign too. She won't tell me where, but her eyes are a vivid shade of blue."

_That _had peaked his intrigue.

"_Her? _ You know _her_?"

Iroh looked surprised.

"Yes, Ms. Katara is a Midnight Dancer, she was here last night. You met her?"

"My father seeks her!" Zuko roared.

"Oh, dear. . ." Iroh chewed his lip. "No, not Katara. She'd be destroyed in the court. She is a delicate flower. . ."

"Are we talking about the same girl?" Zuko questioned.

"Perhaps you should come with me."

* * *

**Sorry this took so long. Zuko and Katara are just gonna keep on running into each other.**

**~QueenVamp**


	7. Chapter 7

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Seven: Fireflies**_

* * *

"Ms. Katara," Iroh's face suddenly hit a very grave tone after taking a dainty sip from his tea glass. "My keen ears have picked up something of importance, your future." Katara nodded, curious for him to continue. "It involves the Pharaoh, my brother, King Ozai. . ." He trailed off stroking his beard.

Katara cringed at the sound of his name, Iroh noted this.

"Word on the grapevine is. . .He wishes to make you his new mistress."

Katara's fingers that rested neatly on his thighs curled inward, fisting the delicately smooth silk material. She didn't lower her eyes; she kept them locked with Iroh's gold and summoned all her courage towards her. "I decline."

Iroh's face turned skeptical. "You have no choice. He rules these lands. You stay here, he will send guards. You run away, he will have you hunted down."

Betrayal flashed in her eyes. "No!" She quickly got to her feet. "I will _not. _I am not one of his natives he can order around." She began to pace, the silk material of her dress fluttering behind her. She now realized she was trying _really _hard not to yell at Iroh. She didn't want to upset him. She didn't trust him.

She didn't trust any of them.

_The likes of those Egyptian scu–_ Her thoughts were abruptly halted by a new leering voice from outside.

"'Not one of his natives'?" A new voice called, Katara turned, finding the Prince of Egypt standing in the desert garden just past the open doors and ruffling gossamer curtains. He was heavily in disguise: dark black cloak and a few of his golden and ruby necklaces, and other elevated signs of wealth, removed. His eyes were blazing angry gold and the comet shaped scar looked even more menacing in the light of the high afternoon.

Katara's breath caught.

"Now, now." Iroh stood and stepped between them. "Calm down you two."

Slowly, Katara back up to the door.

Iroh raised his hands defensively. "Ms. Katara, my nephew, Prince Zuko of Egypt. He'd like to have a few words with you."

* * *

**Sorry, sorry, sorry for the long wait. I've been caught up in my movies and original stories and original characters and playlist and few straying ideas for this story. No matter how much time it takes! It _will _be finished! And the next chap is almost done~ I'm so cute. Look at me I'm adorable~!**

**Please review, don;t leave the cute child alone in the dark, I'll get kidnapped and unable to finish the story~**

**~QueenVamp**


	8. Chapter 8

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Eight: Ice Queen**_

* * *

Zuko looked the curvious dancer up and down with little interest. She'd worn much less last night on stage; her body art had been a shameless substitute for extra covering across her chocolate skin. And then again in her dressing room she was dressed in a heavy gold elaborated robe that brushed the floor and billowed outward like one of his mother's floor sweeping gowns of Persian silk and glittering jewels.

Now, dressed in a mix between the two, Zuko couldn't seem to put a pin on her style: the body shaping red silk bunched at her hips where she was gripping it and fell into folds of fluttery, soft crimson onto the wooden floor. The neckline was tasteful enough, something his sister would wear, even. And the rubies in her ears bared a dangerous resemblance to one of two pairs in the royal treasury. Or _was, _at least.

"Few words?" she repeated hazily. "Speak quietly, or I am leaving."

_My thoughts exactly. _He thought.

"Last night you told me that you would not become my father's mistress." Zuko entered the small room, surprised to find that it was a few degrees cooler inside than it was outside. The soft wafting of the breeze through the stone compound felt nice. He tossed back the hood of his thin black robe that flinted in the breeze. "I need to know, here and now, were your words true?"

"Of course."

"And your words of loyalty towards my mother?"

"All true."

Zuko and Iroh looked to each other and Iroh nodded. Katara raised a brow at him.

"There's a disturbance in the order at the palace. My mother is falling from power while my sister and my father's mistresses rise, if this continues my father may be able to have my mother, your queen, assassinated." He didn't really pause to let the information sink, but from her face alone the prince knew she'd caught on quickly. "She comes from the southern part of Egypt, last descendent from the separate kingdoms, my father married her for status and a declaration of farce love. It wasn't until a few years after Azula's birth that she became obsolete to my father. . ."

Katara nodded. "That when the mistresses started, I know." She adjusted the shawl on her shoulders. "But what does any of this have to do with me?"

Zuko sighed. "If I come to power, instead of my sister. . ." He paused. "I can save my mother."

Blue eyes narrowed on his. "You are the first and only son; of course you'll come to power. Time is all you need. . .unless. . ." He saw the thoughts fly through her eyes as they slowly widened, gripping her shawl tighter around her shoulders in order to keep the foreboding chill away.

He felt the same chill.

_This girl is clever._

"My father kills me too." Zuko finished. "He knows I support my mother."

". . .then. . .you'd kill. . .him. . .?"

"Yes."

That single word held all the blood dripped venom it needed to take on a life of its own. That one word, that 'yes', the confirmation of the most sinful of deeds, or the most unforgettable –the gods would never forgive him. Neither would he.

"It has to be done." Iroh murmured.

"Still," Katara took a breath, seeming to shake of tremors as they touched her. "Where do _I _play a part in this assassination?"

"Simple." Zuko said.

He'd been just beginning to think the girl was smart, smart enough to understand the situation, but he'd guessed too soon. What was her profession? Why did she live here? Did she not know her place?

"Simple, I want you to distract him while I kill him in his bed."

Iroh whirled towards him with a look that screamed. Screamed that he'd messed up everything.

Zuko raised his brow and looked to the entertainer to find her face redder than the silk dress she donned.

_What did I say?_

She opened her mouth and harsh words began to spill, just like last night. "I am _not _a whore. Nor am I someone's _plaything_!" Steam build and her anger rose vocally. "How dare you –just _how dare you–_imply that I would bed with a man more than half my age! Or a man _at all_! Especially if he is not my _husband_! I care not that you are royalty, you have to be the crudest abomination of the male species that I have _ever _seen."

She wheeled towards Zuko in anger.

"Ms. Katara, please sit. We wish to talk to you on this matter." Iroh tried to separate them, but neither teenager was moving.

"Stay away from me! I don't want anything to do with–!"

"Shut her up!" Zuko shouted.

_Slap._

The defiant snap of her hand across his face stung more than her words ever could.

"–you take me to the palace you'll have to do it on a spike! I'd rather die than become anything to him!"

Zuko grabbed a hold on her wrists and advanced on her, shoving her into a cushioned chair and preventing her from escaping, he leaned down. His face close to hers, his hand clenching tightly over her mouth –that rude little mouth, attached to the arrogant pretty face he so desperately wanted to smack in retaliation.

"_Listen _until I finish, _peasant._" He growled. "My father wants you; you are an asset. You distract him; you won't have to worry about your precious status here. You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain."

Her breath was chilly against his hand.

He removed it and. . .

"Don't ever come here again."

. . .was promptly kicked in the shin and shoved out of the way as she made her retreat from the room.

Iroh slumped back into his own cushion, tired and sleeplessly bloodshot eyes rolling up to the ceiling. His hands covered them and Zuko stared at the open door. Darting over and slamming it shut. The sliding door rattled slightly and something fell to the ground behind him.

"Uncle. . .I'm sorry. . ." Zuko whispered. "I thought she could. . .you said. . ."

Somewhere between utter woe and anger, the prince pressed his forehead into the door and clenched his teeth.

She was going to tell.

She would tell Ming, save her own skin, and have him and his uncle executed for treason.

That was it.

It was over.

He was _dead._

_I'm so sorry mother. . ._

". . .she may still. . ." His old uncle's soft rasping voice sent a chill down his spine.

"How–?" Zuko turned to find his uncle on his knees beside the table, in his hands was a tea glass he'd earlier been drinking out of, but. . .it was completely frosted over with the soft white flecks and the tea inside gone still, murky as glass.

But it was sweating.

"That's. . ."

"Ice." Iroh examined.

"Then. . .she's. . ."

"Yes. . ."Iroh stared at the tea cup again and tucked it into his robe. "A Waterbender."

* * *

**Am I forgiven or am I _forgiven_?**

**Secrets out~~! Hell yeah, i like this chapter. How I Zuko acts, what he thinks of Katara (they will talk about this) and their plan. DId you seriously think I'd just have her fall into Ozai's hands? Please. We didn't even fromally meet Azula or Ursa yet.**

**Please review, I don't update until I do. It's terribly, terribly rude to be all touch and go and leave me no feedback.**

**~QueenVamp**


	9. Chapter 9

_**Nights in Egypt**_

**Chapter Nine: Now You See Me**

* * *

Katara didn't stop until she was safely locked in her room. The entire time careful not to run _too _fast. If she didn't want to attract attention. The last thing she needed was Ty Lee or Suki or, even worse, Ming running in here asking if something was wrong. She released a long withheld breath and moved further into the room.

Right now . . .

She fell into the waiting futon, burying herself into the cooled red cotton sheets.

. . . she needed to think.

_He's planning on killing the Pharaoh. . ._She took a breath and let it go into the sheets, momentarily warming her nose as she half-suffocated herself. _This can't be traced back to me. Assassins don't usually go about telling everyone and their mother who their target is . . . or who they told. _Her shoulders untensed with the realization that she was safe. Her usual mundane routine would not be ruptured by their idiotic ideals.

She was safe.

She was free . . . no, not free. Ozai still sought her and as long as the imbecile of a man –a higher up, like his son– continued to take a grain of sand to the importance of her virtue then she'd never be safe.

_Ugh, _Her fingers tightened into the sheets. _They make me so mad! How dare they! How dare they think of no one but themselves? ! _Calling her a whore, call on her to slat the king's lustful hankerings.

She was a woman of illusion. The look but do not touch kind.

Like fresh paint spread upon a canvas, the newly laid colors gave the vivid brightness of a flower, all the imitational beauty of a flower, but if you moved to pluck it from the image . . . it would smudge. Ruined, unwanted, destroyed.

No . . .

Loud echoing knocks erupted from the other side of the door; Katara did not move and heard the door jostle slightly. An unknown voice spoke from the other side. "Ms. Katara? Mother wants to see you in her office, she said it was urgent."

Katara buried her face further into the pillows, trying to calm herself down a bit first.

"Ms. Katara? Are you within?"

Her lungs screamed and she relented.

"Yes . . . yes. I will go right away."

. . . she would not let herself be ruined without a fight.

* * *

Mother Ming was thirty-five years old, and grouchy towards any pretty young thing that bothered her with complaints. Katara knew from the very beginning to keep her mouth _shut. _And without more ado became a favorite of the woman's, but on account of work, Katara was lacking. It was her dancing, her feeble attempts of teaching herself Waterbending, that had kept her in the graces of the woman. Ming had no soft spots for pregnant entertainers or floozies and had more than often hit her girls –not in the face, she'd never let a pretty face suffer– if they so much as made an unchoreographed move towards anyone of the male caliber.

Katara remembered when Suki was new . . . it still gave her chills. The Kyoshi Warrior had been trying to escape from the House and, using her wit, began to make friends with the guards that patrolled the ground, her plan was to make the weakest upon them develop a soft spot for her and help her get out. She had grown particularly close to a boy by the name of Koru who was, like her from China. They'd taken to talking and meeting late at night, planning their escape under the stars of the desert. Now, Suki hadn't been close to Katara then and hadn't told her about her plan to escape, but Katara had warned her about talking to the men and-

Katara passed the lonesome and sickly pale Koru in the corridor, he had become a shadow of his former self. No longer sneaking into the girl's rooms with candy and jokingly calling them all fat. He no longer blushed when the girls practiced their dances. No longer smiled . . . at all. He'd surprise everyone by glancing at Suki every now and again, but, would look away, not wanting to remember anything.

-Suki should have heeded her warning.

No one scared Katara more than Ming, no one loved Katara more than Ming.

It was as simple as that, but . . . nothing could prepare her for what she found by entering that room.

Katara made a final touch up to her make-up then entered Ming's office with a question on her lips that died quickly as the air of the room hit her.

"Katara . . ." Ming's fingers were tangled in her dull brown hair, her face blotched red, eyes bleeding crimson and her make-up smudged.

On her desk was a tea glass from one of the sitting rooms. The contents of the glass frozen over with ice.

Ice . . . _she'd _done it.

And in the corner of the room . . . two masked soldiers of the palace.

"Katara, slave owned by Ming of the Midnight Dancers, you are under arrest for the banned practice Waterbending."

* * *

**Queen: *whistles* Don't underestimate the things that I will do~ Never, and I mean never, guess that I will give you an all passion but no plot storyline without character development and complete and utter hell. Never. You will fall on your ass from the curve balls I have planned. And Suki's little side story, I'm sure I could fit in. Which I will.**

**Insane: She's learned to accept her darkest sides. And she's loving the perks.**

**Queen: And another thing! *runs up to camera* When my friends and I fight (if you heard about our four day long pow-wow) we don't fight like normal friends! We steal each others stuff! Maadi! I WANT MY PANTS BACK! . . . please . . . the fights over . . . and there my favorite . . .**

**A/N: Never, I repeat never again will I update when I'm half asleep. they were such simple spelling mistakes! Gah! Thank you** JackieStarSister **for pointing those out! You are awesome!**

**Please review, I'd like to see who's read enough of me to suspect this and who's _shocked. _**

**~QueenVamp**


	10. Chapter 10

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Ten: Tangled in Corruption**_

* * *

From what the guards reported, she came anything but quietly.

Initially she had tried to run but they'd quickly caught her –noticeable from the ripped material of her dress– but she had fought, surprisingly, without Waterbending and still managed to attemptively unman both guards and left scratches from when she clawed both of their faces. Their blood on her nails, they'd resulted in clubbing her in the back of the head –not hurting her face, of course, the guards knew she needed her face.

Still it seemed odd to Zuko, had he been in her situation, he, of course, would have used his Firebending to get free and run. But run where?

The little dancer had nowhere to go. And with a warrant for her arrest, she was bond to come back anyway.

Maybe she was trying to prove she was innocent?

Then why did she run?

_Ugh, _Zuko stained and pinched the bridge of his nose. _Women are so confusing. _

He couldn't let himself get caught up in it though, he had to remain indifferent. This situation had to be handled with the upmost care

As requested she was delivered not to prison but to his uncle's summer estate home on the outskirts of the capital with a nice overlook of the Nile River and the capital's beauty. It hadn't been used for years though, Zuko could tell by the gathered sand under the windows. But they couldn't really risk calling the slaves from the palace to come. They didn't want to risk anyone seeing a fugitive in the king's brother's house. At least, while she was shackled. Or violent.

Prince Zuko observed her from the upper gallery of the summer house, smiling at the turned tables. How tall and regal and queenly she'd been this afternoon, had diminished within the falling of hours. Her hands were bound behind her back and she was blind folded. She made no move to fight further with her guards. Nor did she lash out with that silver-tongue of hers.

"Unbind her." He ordered and it had been his undoing.

Because as soon as her sapphire eyes, scanned the room and caught him . . .

"You may go." He waved the guards away and began his descent of the staircase towards her. They, in turn, bowed and left the house without much ado and then the two were alone. He walked casually, small leisure steps that were light, almost nonexistent, from years of training.

"You? What –what are you doing?" She stammered, obviously confused by the situation.

"I put out the warrant for your arrest," Zuko said, coolly, not wanting to waste time with explanations or for anymore of her unnecessary questions or speaking, for that matter. "When we spoke this afternoon you still seemed . . . _withdrawn _from my proposal and let's face it I can't exactly take 'no' for an answer these days."

Her eyes widened and filled with tears.

And they froze. Not falling.

"You – you put out a warrant for my arrest. _Just _because of some frozen water?"

"No, I put out the warrant for your arrest because I need you for my father's assassination _and _the frozen water."

. . . disaster.

"Do you not realize what you have done? ! You destroyed everything!"

Zuko smacked her hands away. "Calm yourself, woman. You could have gone back to your little silly little life after all this was over –had you not fought my guards." _Now I'll have to actually send her to prison. _He thought wryly and almost smiled. "You let your anger get the better of you and you lost all chances of redem–"

_Smack._

His world erupted into a blaze of icy blue eyes.

"I never could have gone back and you know it! They showed Ming the evidence! She would have never have _wanted _me back! You devil! Demon! Egyptian scum! I hate you! I hate _all of you_!" She moved to hit him again, but Zuko stopped her hand. Almost too easy.

His eyes ignited with anger. "And it's for _those words _that you will allow you to rot in your cell."

She struggled, body shacking with rage.

"Unless you help me."

"Never! You destroyed my life! Everything I've ever worked for means nothing now _because of you_!" She shoved him away and they both tumbled backward, Zuko's head cracking against the stone floor. She pulled herself up to sit on him, glaring hatefully, lips pulled back in an unattractive snarl. Her hands fisted his shirt. "Every day since I came to this forsaken country has been complete and utter hell. Every day here is just a reminder on how much I hate all of you. All of your people. Every last one of you."

He couldn't take this, this insult anymore.

"Really?" He asked leeringly. "Then why did you even come here?"

"I had no choice!" She screamed and he jumped up, attempting to roll them both over so, he could be on top, but she shoved down on him with muscles that flexed under the sheer material of her dress. "But the difference is, what makes me better than you, is that I would never kill someone! I can live with my hatred! I can pretend to like all of you all! And yet you, stupid prince, ask me to kill your father, and take the blame too? Have you no thoughts, no decency, for the sentiments of my life? Have you ever thought, at any time, that maybe you are needs aren't the most important thing? Maybe I have a life here." The softness in her voice wore and then the white hot anger sharpened. You brutal idiot–!"

"Enough!" Zuko's blood boiled.

"–I can't even Waterbend!" she screamed, much louder than him.

Zuko quickly shoved her off, sat back on his haunches and leapt on top of her. Slamming her head into the stone floor she cried out in pain and he pressed his weight down on top of her stomach. One hand grabbing for her shoulder and the other for her neck. His fingers clenched and her hands reached to grab at his wrist, mouth agape like a fish and eyes bright with life. Life he could easily pull from her.

His eyes narrowed, dark and dangerous.

"_What_?" He hissed.

* * *

**Yes, before the couple buddy-buddy Zutara we have this angry Dark!Zuko on our hands. And a royallypissed!Katara**

**Zuko seems to think that all the entertainers (Midnight Dancers) are poor little rich girls who, when coming to his great country, had a falling out and were forced into this life. Therefore, he treats them badly because they make them look bad for not being rich. (A lot of rich people in one country says a lot). Does that make sense? I'll explain it later. Lots of explaining later.**

**Review me, tell me what you think!**

**~QueenVamp**


	11. Chapter 11

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Eleven: Living Dead Girl**_

* * *

"_What_?" It was said at a hiss, angry golden eyes flaring like embers lit in a fire. Katara could barely process the sheer murderous intent of the man above her –due to the hit from the floor and the moderate suffocation the Egyptian prince was applying to her throat. She gasped, but he didn't relent, her nails dug into his arm.

"I'm lucky if I can manage ice. . ."

Suddenly air returned to her lungs and he was off of her, pacing like an angry animal. Katara rubbed her throat and glared at him from the floor. He had no right to be angry with her. He's the one who went gallivanting off thinking he could use her natural born ability to murder his own kin. _Spoiled prince. . ._She slowly got to her feet. Mind searching for a way out of the mansion he'd brought her to. Where exactly was it? How far from the House? Her questions were cut off by a single thought. _I have nowhere to go now. I'll be killed anywhere._

She was silent a moment and looked to the prince, still pacing, angry comet-shaped scar pinching with his face. It was sickly fascinating trait. It was said that the Pharaoh himself had given it to him for disobedience. It had never healed beyond the tender pink flesh scarring that would remain forever. A healer from the north might have been able to help, if applied immediately and if the king's people trusted Waterbender's enough.

"You're telling me you can't Waterbend, _at all_?" His voice may have dropped a few tones, but the tense dangerous tone still lingered in his words.

"You didn't really give me a chance to tell you otherwise."

"How?"

She stared, confused. "What?"

"_How_?" He growled. "How can you be a Waterbender, come here, be able to make ice and _nothing else_?"

Katara's expression turned blasé, like a mask of superiority she'd often remember great politicians and diplomats wearing when they came to visit the House –amazingly they usually melted after a few moments of dancing and drinking, but Katara's was a permanent mask, a weapon. It seemed to irk the prince as well.

"Well, your highness, when one is forced into servitude there isn't much time for training." Her hands found her hips, and she squared her shoulders. "I was young when I left my home, my training had barely begun and I had no one here to teach me. . .and in case you have forgotten this _is _the Lands of Fire, Waterbending is _illegal _here. I _have _been a well-conducted member of society, up until now."

The prince stared at her, dumbstruck.

"Did you think I was a part of some organization plotting against the crown anyway?"

"No. . ." He looked away scornfully, and then met her eyes again. "I thought you were a little dancer who fancied herself above everyone else and practiced in private." On the word 'private' he was nearly nose to nose with her, but Katara wasn't backing down now.

"How very stereotypical." She commented, not missing the venom in his gaze. "So I've been ripped from my life as a _chaste _dancer and disowned by my 'mother' and brought here by a temperamental prince who can't seem to grasp they we all don't fall into place?"

The prince's face flushed and he opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by another. "I'd say that is right."

Both looked over to Iroh, dressed in crimson robes meant for sleeping, crossing the threshold of the room with a tired look in his old eyes. His mouth was a thin, unmoving line and his eyes were set on Katara. "Mistress Katara. . ." The elder man moved with the fluency of a bender, almost dance-like grace that helped his footsteps become almost silent, but the padding of his slippers and the rounded weight of his body built over lax years wouldn't allow it.

When he reached for her hands she didn't pull away, but she jumped when he bowed over them like she was a lady of the high Egyptian court, or something of that privileged rank.

"Uncle–!" The prince jumped back.

"I am sorry for the trouble this has caused you, Katara. Truly I am, I haven't the right to even speak your name under these circumstances and I apologize for my nephew's behavior –once again. I didn't want it to come to this."

Katara pulled her hands away. "But it still did."

His frown was enough to make any heart break, he truly looked like he _was _sorry, but Katara wouldn't allow herself to let him get to her. Skill of warrior that she may lack, she had the heart of one and the will of iron that came with it.

"Now what happens to me now? I still refuse."

"Mistress Katara–" he began, but Katara wouldn't let him finish.

"Why did you do this? That's all I want to know is why?" Her voice didn't break this time. "I may not like any of you, but I have never given anyone any reason to hate me. This country, your people, have taken everything from me and forced me to bear witness to my people's fall. But what have I done? Nothing. I haven't been in contact with any generals, or my family, or anyone. Yet you pick me out of the crowd, twist my secrets and bring me here? What will you do now that I can do nothing to help you?"

The prince glared. "My father wants you. . ."

"You could find many other women that he would want!" Katara snapped.

"No, he wanted you exclusively. Once he sets his sight, he has what he wants. His mistresses are the only people he is with without guards. You being a bender and not wanting him was just a bonus for us. You could have killed him while he slept or while his back was turned. While he was intimate, while his guard was down."

Katara blushed madly, shoving aside those thoughts and rearing up to the prince. "Well, I guess that plan is foiled now!"

"Not really." Iroh said.

"What? !" The two turned to him again.

"You can make ice. Ice. . ." Iroh tapped a scar on his neck. "Can _cut deep_."

Katara glared. "I can't do it at will."

"But you _can _make ice?"

"_Yes,_" Katara growled, a pounding headache burning in her head. "But not at will. I can't bend water either," Her brows fell. "I managed to turn off that part of me in order to dance. What you saw in the tea room, I did that out of anger, because I wasn't careful."

"We can fix that." Iroh said.

Katara's breath caught in her throat. She didn't have to look to know that the prince and her wore the same looks of shock. _'Fix that'? Fix what? My bending? _Something buried deep part of her seemed to warm at the promise of having her bending back. But it was quickly killed when she thought. . .

"You're forgetting one thing."

It was now Iroh's and the prince's turn to stare.

"I'm not going to kill the king."

* * *

Memories of swirling blue water filled her dreams. The dance long forgotten, the steps unpracticed, the moves she possessed but couldn't unlock. She remembered her childhood. She remembered her white fur trimmed parka with dyed blue seal skin and the beads made of rocks, tooth, and bone. The pretty charms and blue glass sent from the warmer nations as peace offerings. The warm hut, the fire, the snow, the cold, the cool summer sun.

She remembered being a child, falling back into the snow and staring up into the cool wispy sky as the snow fell around her. Colleting on her eyelashes and against her pink lips. Shouts of voices were distant and she couldn't make out the conversation.

But that one cold memory was the warmest thing she had in her heart.

Tears began to well behind her eyes.

She opened them to find the ceiling of 'her room'.

She sat up from the bed –never in her life had she slept in an actual bed– of silken red sheets and beautiful coverlets with swirling designs of darker red. Red wood. Red curtains.

Red, red, red

_Always so much red. _Katara idly thought back to the time where everything was blue and shoved it aside. She didn't really like the color blue anymore. Blue was always consumed by red. How the blue sky bled to crimson in the evening. How red ran through her veins. How her blue coat was coated with blood that was not hers.

Red controlled everything.

She hated red.

But she hated blue for submitting so easily to the dominating color.

* * *

With the light of the morning the mansion proved to be as magnificent as she'd expected from a wealthy Egyptian house. The entirety of the complex was made out of a sandstone type bricks that like everything else in the country seemed to be made out of and consisted of two floors. The lower floor –holding a furnished living space, trophies, a small servant's quarters and kitchen– was mainly for show with all its elaborate decoration. The pride being, huge marble workings Iroh called 'columns' that came from a place called Rome. Looking up the tall, strange, structures you'd notice the other floor just above it that seemed to jut outward, held up by four smaller columns attractively and the staircase leading to the upper floor –more intimately decorated because it held the rooms of the household and separate washrooms for each.

Katara had been given such one of those rooms and, quite honestly, couldn't begin to fathom why the idea of staying in this mansion seemed to be her only option.

The harsh gold of the prince's eyes met hers through her mind's eye.

_"You will stay here until we can further decide what to do with you."_

_Aw, yes, _She thought wryly. _That's why._

She sat on her bed, bored by the gentle wafting of the gossamer curtains in the breeze. Katara twisted uncomfortably in her ripped and worn silk dress; the ripped seams hung hair fine silk threads that clung to the hopeless fabric like life depended on it. Wrinkled, torn and dirty.

She looked like the slave girl who'd been dragged here years before.

Why hadn't they just thrown her into the slave's quarters instead?

A tentative, but persistent knocking echoed against the door. "Mistress Katara? Are you within?"

The voice was none she had heard before. Not the prince, not Iroh, not any she could recall. Curious and cautious, Katara stayed put on the bed and called to the voice.

"Yes."

The door opened and, to Katara's relief and question, a young slave girl stepped in. She wore a plain white dress of no significance at all and her hair was pulled back into a no nonsense bun gathering at the back of her neck. "Good morning, Mistress Katara." The girl bowed. "I have brought a dress to replace the one from last night. . ."

The girl trailed off, eyes lingering on Katara longer than necessary and taking in the damage of the material.

"Forgive my boldness, but did you sleep in that, my lady?"

"Yes," Katara nodded coolly, cautious still. "There was nothing else to sleep in."

"Oh!" The girl's cheeks flushed and she bowed again. "Forgive me! The household staff just arrived not an hour before morning –a great while after your arrival. Lord Iroh informed us that you were already abed. We assumed you traveled with your own staff and dressed for bed. I'm sorry."

During the rant Katara began to slide off the bed and inched closer to the girl, whose eyes got wider with each step Katara took.

"I am sorry! Please don't be angry–"

"Enough." Katara pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's alright, you didn't know and I was too tired to change."

The girl stared at Katara weakly and smiled. She then raised a tray she'd been carrying in her hands, cotton red dress laid on it with gold bangles. "The prince and Lord Iroh wish that you will change and come downstairs for breakfast."

Katara stared at the girl, momentarily considering putting on the dress and going downstairs to be pestered by the prince.

Then it dawned on her.

The little girl called her 'mistress' which meant they must have told the slaves she was a guest. Katara fanned herself. "Tell the prince and Lord Iroh that I am feeling tired from my long journey and I should like to relax, and eat, in my own room." Drawing the spotless draw of an aristocrat to servant order that she'd heard many times, Katara fought her smile as the girl nodded and left the dress on a table.

"Then please, change and get some rest. I shall return with breakfast for you."

* * *

The enraged growls from the prince echoed through the halls, but he dare not enter her room.

Katara stared out her window, half finished breakfast tray shoved away from her on the ledge. The heat of the morning and then afternoon settled in. Katara fanned herself heavily and stared out the mansion and out onto the busy market place, where people were constantly coming and going and filling the streets with noise, sounds and smells. Anyone could really hide there. Ty Lee had made a decent living in the market beforehand; she danced for pocket change and bought food and lived in rundown buildings.

And she was a noble banished because her father couldn't stand to look at her.

Katara had been pulled from the comfort of her family and put into the slave markets.

She was sure she'd survive long enough to get out of Egypt.

Peering down onto the awning some feet below her window, Katara withdrew from the window.

* * *

After being brought to the House, Katara had never gone out into the market place, especially at night. Where she was a servant herself there were other servants that went to the market. Thin, wizened girls who could never pray become dancers. Ming had enough knowledge to know Katara would one day become beautiful and a talented dancer.

"A pretty face has no place in a dirty market." Ming had always said, and it was true.

The lowlifes of Egypt (even lower than the standard low) only went after the pretty girls with the turn of misfortune and their head in the clouds.

Katara hadn't realized someone was following her, the soft deliberate steps she made herself and unsettling silence was enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, but Katara didn't bother to turn. She had to find a place to hide until tomorrow . . .

Dancing on the streets until she could gain enough money to leave seemed to be the only option other than prostitution. But the illusion of it all paid much more. Ming had taught her dance, one of the few things she could take away from her and she could use that ability to get enough money to leave, for her lack of schooling, Katara was smart enough to know better than to go somewhere without supplies –she'd even ransacked her room in the mansion for any suitable thing to take with her, but found nothing.

_Could have searched harder for a cloak. _Katara shivered in the sundress she'd been given to wear by the little slave girl. It was thin, meant for a hot day and was a dull shade of red with inlays of gold silk that made the fabric seemed to shimmer under the light of the lone streetlamp. _Why does it get so cold at night? _Katara wondered while rubbing her forearms to create warmth.

Heavy footsteps echoed behind her. Indicating someone running. Katara turned–

Meaty paw-like hands grabbed her, shoving her into an empty alleyway. The waning light from the main road going faint.

She couldn't see his face, but Katara immediately lashed out like she had at the guards.

The scuffle lasted for a few minutes, Katara's muscle no match for the much taller man's in the struggle to get her onto the ground. During the fight the man had reached out, fist grabbing at her chest and pulling away a handful of spider web-like cloth with a satisfying _riiiiiiiip _screaming along the seams.

Katara screamed too, but her attempts her futile.

No one answered the screams made in the dead of the night.

"Gotcha." Her feet were kicked out from under her and she went plummeting backward as the man remained standing, still clutching onto her wrists and the scrap of her dress. Staring up at the man, a chilling memory clicked in her mind. The silhouette of the man looked similar to someone else's.

She was frozen in terror.

Unable to move.

Like a terrified child.

_. . .they grabbed hold of her arms and pinned her down so she couldn't move and the gag shove into her mouth muffled her screams, taking up all space between the roof of her mouth and tongue. Denying her the ability to speak. She didn't disserve it. She wasn't a person in their eyes. Just an object for this use and her voice was a nuisance that needed to be silenced. . . _

Fire erupted from behind the man and a terrible scream echoed past his lips and into the hollow night. Katara watched as he fell, rolling off to the side and rippled flesh of his back burning. The foul smell of burning flesh filled the air and Katara recoiled, even more surprised when two masked guards ran forward and grabbed the man without a word to her –dragging him off into the night like a silent kill.

"See how helpless you are?" the voice of her savior asked, the soles of his bare feet padded across the stone road. His own silhouette divergent greatly to the one of the man she'd just seen, this one was smaller, but held a more regal form of importance.

_Pale white skin. . ._

"This weakness, this maidenly distress . . ." His voice twisted disgustedly as he drew closer. "It doesn't suit you. It makes you but a mere shadow to whom to claim to be."

_Strong muscle, royal gold choker and necklace. . ._

"Quit faking it!"

_Fierce gold eyes. Austere mouth. Charcoal dark hair._

_ The prince. _Her breath caught in her throat as he suddenly knelt down in front of her, grabbing her wrists, turning the palms of her hands to her face.

"You have a _gift. _It was given to you by the _gods. _You should be shamed for not fighting to keep it."

Katara wrenched her wrists away and glared. "Gifts are given for purpose. Once taken the purpose is destroyed. You're people stole it from me. . ."

The prince snarled. "Gifts like this can't be taken."

"What kind of gift can't–?"

"Ones that you _fight _for."

The two were incased in a long moment of silence, the velvet dark night swathing around them and nearly concealing them from sight had it not been for the pale glow of the oil lamp.

For a brief moment she was angry. Angry that he'd followed her, angry that he'd saved her, angry that he was here. Then the strained embarrassment and humiliation of being in this state, unable to protect herself hit her. It made her wish she could summon ice now, a dagger, just to conjure the same look from his face. She'd been powerful at the House, he couldn't touch her there, but now she was in his domain.

He didn't understand. He was a child, albeit a year older. He was fresh for battle and pampered and had received no blows such as this one. He did not know the struggle. The fight it took to hold on and the devastation that followed when it slipped. She was tired after the spirit breaking the Egyptian slave traders had dealt her.

Katara's eyes wavered over the scar marring his handsome face.

It came from battle, from suffering.

_Maybe it's an understatement._

The prince sighed and rose to his feet. "Come," he offered her his pale hand. "We will go back to the mansion and get you a new dress."

No room for argument. No hesitation.

He knew what he wanted, she'd give him that. But what aristocrat didn't?

She stood on her own, gathering the lengthy skirt in her left fist and the ripped front in her right. "This dress is hideous. It's terrible to run in too."

The prince huffed and his brows drew together. "You're the one who ran in it."

Katara stared at the tears made into the dress, her mind play idly with what would of happened if the prince hadn't of followed her and then contrasted to if she could Waterbend. It was like a fork in the road, two very different paths with very different ends but ripped from the fabric of the same beginning.

She stood at another one now.

To have her bending.

Or to not.

* * *

**I hate and love all of you. Longer chapter, ha!**

**Yeah. . .it was meant to end after the first page mark, but I figured after the last chapter you're all in a screw Zuko mood and I had so many ideas . . . VOTE ON MY POLL FOR THE NEXT TWIST!**

**Due to my new obsession with _The Avengers _a.k.a Loki a.k.a Tom Hiddleston I've just been a big fangirl mess and have tried to dignify myself for that beautiful slice of Englishman. Seriously, if you haven't seen the movies _look up a picture of him. _He is gorgeous. I was rooting for him during the entire movie. His entrances are amazing! And his character has grown from _Thor. _And I'm looking forward to _Thor 2 *_grumbles* which I don't care how 'underwraps' it is until 2013 do not underestimate my computer skills *ends grumbles* and I'm trying to figure out if Siygn -goddess of faithfulness, I think- will be in the movie because she's Loki's wife in legend and in comic and -if you read the legends- during his punishments given to him by Odin, she's always been there to stand by him.**

**Anyway, *composes herself* Keep in mind that there will be a lot of background story to this. In Ty Lee, Iroh, and Katara. Zuko has a little more background, but nothing that can't be covered in a chapter. He pretty much has all his cards on the table, while Katara is still holding back who she really is and what happened during her time on the slave markets.**

**For those of you who may have caught on to Katara's past, I got elements of her reactions from the book _'Living Dead Girl' _by Elizabeth Scott. It's a chilling novel and the girl 'Alice' refers to who she was in a sort of third person sense and how selfish she was then as to how she is now. She talks about te tiredness of living with a murderer and people who don't know don't care on a daily bases and how she wishes for death, the want to run away, but the feeling of being trapped and that she can't for fear of her family who only lives a few miles away. But I gave Katara more anger.**

**Review me, tell me what you think!**

**~QueenVamp**


	12. Chapter 12

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Twelve: Pools of Blue**_

* * *

This woman would be giving him many headaches.

It was not that Zuko absolutely loathed having the _personable_ lead dancer of the elite Midnight Dancers staying with them –especially since his uncle had to leave the estate for a few days in order to contact someone who could teach Katara how to use her bending at will– but according to what his uncle had said on 'properly handling a lady' he'd better act like he damn well couldn't be happier to have her. _Then _she'd made the move of attempting to _run away, _and he'd woken the next day only to be told by his uncle that _she had agreed to their terms. _

Zuko knew he'd be doing _a lot _of meditating over the next few days.

And during which time, while the myriad of his servants flocked to the wounded girl, Zuko began to estimate exactly how much time it usually took for Ozai's infatuation with one woman to escalate. The last girl –a mousy brown-haired, green-eyed girl– wore full length silk dresses called kimonos of various bright colors and floral patterns with tall complicated flower hairpieces and jewels of jade–he had to admit his father had some exotic tastes– it had taken him exactly two days to woo her into bed. One day to collect her for a 'private' party and then that night he'd had her.

The Pharaoh had never sought out someone quite like Katara –fiery, spirited, wild– it seemed as though he much preferred the quiet seductive girls. There was no way Katara could emulate that. She was everything Ming, whom he had the unfortunate opportunity on meeting on various occasions, was. She was commanding she was regal and she was everything an aristocrat lord feared in his daughter: independent. Perhaps, the king didn't see the odd flames in her soul? Katara had looked plenty terrified the night he'd met her.

Zuko chewed the inside of his cheek and finally gave up.

_It's been three days. _He knew it wouldn't be long now before he was looking into Ming's house only to find that she was no longer in the House –the guards paid off Ming and warned her of telling anyone that Katara was a Waterbender. And Zuko had paid off the guards and warned them about telling anyone that Katara was a Waterbender.

It was all a constellated circle of events.

They would have to take Katara to court soon, once her bruises healed, and it was game on.

* * *

And he hadn't expected the dancer to take advantage of every luxury available to her at the mansion during her time of healing. In the morning, specific breakfast foods had been brought to her rooms, and then she'd had a bath, a massage, had her nails cleaned, her hair cut and styled and new make-up brought to her.

One would think she was the Queen of Sheba.

His uncle had already taken the liberty of having new clothes for the palace made for her and she'd spent two hours in her room getting measurements and having various fabrics –linen, silk, gossamer, crimson red, flame orange, sun yellow, gold– thrown over her body and turned into _expensive _new dresses.

He couldn't take it anymore!

But that was sadly not the final bravo of her second day at the mansion.

Now, he found her lounging in one of his uncle's lava baths. Warmed by the sun and a Firebender's chi the crystal waters boiled at temperatures that were therapeutic for the elderly and luxurious for the young and rich. And here he was, long day of stress had and towel in arm only to find her _swimming in it. _

"_What _do you think you are doing?" He asked as her head bobbed above the water, steaming emanating around her and hiding her from his view.

"Alright, alright, I'll get out." She stood, the bindings of her torso starkly contrasting the dark chocolate tone of her skin that had been slightly pinkened by the heated water. Zuko took a full step back. Her lips parted with the chill of the air, dark too, but pink.

She had features he'd never seen before.

He couldn't help but ask.

"What did you mean back then? By you aren't native?" He watched, entranced as Katara rose from the pool collecting her hair onto one shoulder and ringing it out. Now damp the thin material of her undergarments the maids had given her clung to her body, like almost desperately trying to hold on to her. The linen towel she wrapped around her body cut off his gaze. Zuko swallowed. "You really shouldn't swim in those."

She shot him a look and continued to twist her hair up and back with her fingers, then let the damp ringlets fall down on her shoulders and down the smooth expanse of her back, partly hidden by the towel.

"As you put it, your highness, the king would 'like' me for my: exotic eyes and dark skin." She patted down a stray curl and shot him a look. "Don't be daft, even a blind man could tell I'm foreign. I told you, I come from the south. The Lands of Water and Ice."

"How long have you been here?" He asked, skeptic still.

"Since I was a child." She gathered her towel around her body and nodded to the maids who hurried off back into the mansion and up the stairs. "Do you want my life story, your highness?"

"No," he said curtly. "I wouldn't like to be bantered by your childhood and past struggles, thanks." Katara made a noise akin to a snort. "What?"

"Nothing, nothing. It was a cough . . . excuse me." She gave an overzealous parody of a curtsey and then made her way back into the bathhouse on the lower level of the house, where the maids were waiting for her with a bath. As if to prove she didn't care he was watching, Katara proceeded to unknot the towel and tossed into onto a marble table, then moved further into the room. But before that, Zuko spotted something rippled and marred the flesh of her back.

He'd seen them in the palace before. On ripped strips on the slave's backs.

Marks from a whip.

* * *

Zuko could just barely remember bringing the girl home that night. His head was clouded with fury and sleep and he'd simply left her in the care of his uncle, only to wake up the next morning to find she had agreed to their terms and wanted her bending back even if it was to kill the king.

"It makes no sense, uncle." Zuko had argued before Iroh could leave to fetch an old acquaintance of his. "First she does and then she doesn't."

"Perhaps it was your little speech that convinced her?" Iroh asked. "She was _attacked, _Prince Zuko. When instances like that happen they tend to change a person. She probably felt vulnerable. And trust me, a woman like Mistress Katara would not like that at all."

Zuko remembered the bruises on her wrists and arms he'd seen that morning at breakfast.

"But what does she want?" Zuko asked quickly. "What can she gain from this?"

Iroh frowned. "Zuko, Zuko . . . you hired her for this purpose then you must _trust _her. If you do not than how can you hope for her to respect you?"

"I do not need that peasant's respect!"

"But you do. If she does not respect you, then how do you know she won't just tell Ozai about your motives?" Zuko stared shellshocked in realization. "You do not give a beast her claws without a price."

"And her price. . .?" Zuko whispered.

Iroh smiled at this. "She wants to go home. Back the southern Lands of Water and Ice, where she grew up."

"That's it?" Zuko sneered. "How petty."

"Petty . . . but Ozai could offer her the same thing and more if she turns on us." Iroh brushed past him slightly and sighed. "Collect your trust. Be more pleasant. I do not wish to hear of any threats made on your behalf when I return."

* * *

"So, you wished to speak with me?" the dancer fixed her blue eyes on Zuko questionably.

Over the past few days the pair had eaten their meals in completely separate parts of the house, but, at his request, Katara had joined him at the formal table for lunch and was now currently staring at him like he had three eyes.

"Yes . . . I thought, well," Zuko coughed and glanced over at the servant's door wondering where the hell his food was. "Since we will be working together for some time I think it will be best if we knew . . . any abnormalities about each other."

"Abnormalities?"

"Yes, fears, concerns, any such?"

"Um. I fear for my life and I'm concerned for your sanity."

That's it!

"I am being serious, Katara."

First time he'd said her name it was like adic on his tongue.

The girl quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Really? Give me an example."

Zuko's face flamed. She was just teasing him.

"I fear nothing and I'm concerned for nothing."

The girl rolled her eyes and leaned forward against the table. "Nice try, but I think you supposed to say: I fear you because I don't trust you and I'm concerned that you'll tell Ozai about my plan and get me killed." Zuko stared. "You're not that quiet when you're displeased about something."

"You . . ." Zuko bit his tongue hard.

The girl glared at him with a schooled expression. "You're qualm is _insulting_. How did you think this was going to work if you can't even stand to trust me?"

"You're the one who ran away." he snapped back.

"Yes, but that was before," she crossed her arms. "This is now. We need to work together."

She was right.

For the love of Agni she was right, but . . .

"How do I know you won't betray me?" Zuko hissed.

"Simple, you know I'm a Waterbender. If I tell Ozai you're going to kill him, you tell him I'm a Waterbender. It's collateral. You're a prince; you should get a trail before they sentence you to death."

Point again, but . . .

"What if I'm assassinated?"

"Then how will I get home?" she asks. "All I want is to go home and there is no way Ozai will allow me to live if you die too."

_As a consolation prize he will. _Zuko mused.

Though she'd managed to quell most of his fears. There was still that nagging in the back of his mind that didn't allow him to trust her completely.

"Now let's try again, your highness: what are your fears and concerns?"

Her eyes pierced right through him, holding him in place and dragging his darkness into the light.

_What's the harm?_ He wondered. _Make up a fear._

"I fear . . . for my mother's life."

Zuko's eyes widened when the words slipped past his lips.

A true fear.

Zuko watched the girl's face soften from his words and quickly stood, leaving as the servant brought in food.

Those words were a milestone in their plan.

* * *

The prince could not remember a time he'd been happier to see his uncle –or a time he'd had the sudden urge to run up and hug him once he passed over the threshold of the mansion like a child. Since the slip up at lunch three days ago the girl had been trying to talk to him and Zuko had been trying to avoid her –the house was certainly large enough– and having more people around should put a bigger gap between them for time to oddly chat.

Zuko calmly welcomed his uncle back to the game and studied the new pawn he'd brought.

The man was old with long silver hair and a formidably earnest face with matching silver eyes that darted every which way as if looking for someone. He was a member of peace keepers called the White Lotus, same as his uncle. Of course, the group hadn't done anything to interfere with the problems of the world as of late and had resulted to keeping tabs on the nations and their royal families; doing what they could. From what Iroh told Zuko he was a Waterbender and the best to be found.

"Prince Zuko this is Master Pakku, a colleague and friend of mine."

The man nodded coolly to Zuko and Zuko returned the gesture.

Zuko thought he looked weird dressed in the diplomatic robes of red and gold, the man was so obviously Russian he was surprised that the guards had allowed him into the country without think he was a slave taken from his homeland.

"Where is this Lady Katara you've spoken of, Iroh?" Pakku asked his voice seemed to dispute over her name. Zuko's eyes narrowed questionably.

"Oh, yes she's upstairs?" Zuko nodded and Iroh took a step towards the staircase. "Follow me, friend."

Zuko followed the pair quietly, eyes flickering between Iroh and Pakku how quickly they walked up the stairs and the how anxious the two seemed to be.

Iroh rapped softly at Katara's door and Katara gave permission to enter.

Zuko stood in the hallway for a moment, watching the two men in front of him pause in the doorway before Pakku walked further into the room.

Katara was sitting at her window, a gold gown of loose gossamer and silk hung around her body as if she were a goddess from Roman mythology.

The man bowed to Katara smoothly and addressed her in a voice so soft; Zuko had to lean forward to hear it.

"Well, we will leave you two to your work then." Iroh said loudly and took Zuko's arm as they exited the room. "You've been working on trust while I was gone haven't you Prince Zuko?"

"Yes, uncle."

"Good." The older man smiled. "Now, that that's solved, I think it's time you understand the tensions between the Lands of Fire and the Lands of Water and Ice." Iroh said and tugged him along to his room and sat him at large desk in the corner of the room. "First off, the Lands of Water and Ice dominate more than half our world, only because it is broken in two and led by two completely different royal families that are in direct progeny of the first Waterbenders, as our family is of the first Firebenders."

"Fascinating."

Iroh gave him a look.

"The Northern Tribe, the richest of the two, have a elderly king on the throne, his wife is dead and they have one heir: Princess Yue. Now, Yue is foretold not to be a bender, but she has abilities beyond that. It is said that she was blessed by the god La, or the Moon Spirit and it turned her dark hair white."

"Why are they blessed with such propionate gods?" Zuko asked, fingers tracing over a sketch of La that had been laid out in front of him.

"It is because they remain true to their faiths."

". . . Katara does not." Zuko muttered.

"Leave her out of the lesson, Zuko," Iroh sighed, closing his eyes and wrinkling his forehead. "You do not know what she has dealt with in her life."

"Alright."

"Now . . . The Southern Tribe, though not rich or all around friendly, have the fiercest warriors both bender and not. Their population is mainly woman dominated so they have a strong network of healers, again both bender and not. Their King is still in his prime, a warrior, it is rumored that his wife was murdered by rouge Firebenders in our men's armor. His heirs include a son named Sokka. Now he is not a bender but he is a known warrior, hunter and leader. He was crowned prince on his sixteenth birthday . . ."

Zuko snorted. "He was _just _crowned?"

Iroh's eyes narrowed. "Yes, they have to _earn _their privileges there. And according to our records he had a daughter . . . she was just showing signs of bending before she disappeared."

"What? Did she get eaten by a tiger seal or something?"

"No . . . their King reported that she was taken. Actually all the tension from the northern and southern boarders started after her disappearance . . ." Iroh whispered softly. "From what they tell us, foreign ships attacked at early morning, our nation's ships. They went onto their land, slaughtered many civilians and took their children. They king reported that his wife and daughter had fallen victim to them."

Zuko stared. "They blame us?"

"No . . . all of us. Their king took Firebender's prisoner, Zuko. They tortured them, they dismembered them and then they let their remains wash up on our shores. They are angry, Zuko. Whether we like it or not, they want war."

"After all these years?"

"A year for every life those benders took. Your father refuses to acknowledge it, but the day Princess Ekatarian was taken there has been war on our doorsteps."

"Ekatarian . . ."

* * *

**Yes, I'm doing it! I'm going with the classic hidden princess!**

**Personally I like the name Ekatarian! Tell me if you like it too, okay? The rest will be explained in upcoming chapters so review so I can update faster!**

**Anyway, yes Zuko's a paranoid, untrusting, war-raging prince, but we all love our disfunctional little characters, non? And Iroh just seems to string him along, as i was writing this I was thinking: wtf . . .? He's sounding so grave and un-cool . . . like M. Night made him during the live-action movie. Dude, people were pissed about that. Buuuut, in his own twisted way Iroh is helping Zuko to get closer to Katara and let's face it with this couple anything is possible.**

**Quick History Lesson!: The Lands of Water and Ice consist of the north pole and the south pole and Russia and any other colder country around the three listed. Basically all the 'Lands of' are made up of countries. For example, Egypt is the capitol of the Lands of Fire, which dominates much of the souhtern hemosphere. Russia is the capitol of the northern watertribe, Antartica is the capitol of the southern watertibe.**

**Blah! I haven't gone outside all day. This is becoming a problem.**

**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	13. Chapter 13

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Thirteen: Her Royal Highness**_

* * *

It was a name. A simple, silly name drawn from the lips of the queen after her long northern tribe influence on the day of her daughter's, the princess's, birth. She'd heard the name on countless occasions growing up in the barracks of her homeland. It had been embroidered into her sheets.

_ "Her Imperial Highness, Princess Ekatarian of the Southern Watertribe."_

It was a beautiful name to announce to a room full of relatives, warriors and diplomats.

_"Little Princess Ekatarian . . . not so imperial now are ya?"_

It was wretched falling from _their _vile lips.

She'd long since casted it away from her mind since the day her crown and pretty dresses were ripped from her as well. She had no choice but too . . .

"Excuse me, my lady,"

. . . now a white-haired man appeared in the house and from his lips fell her name . . .

"You are her ladyship, Princess Ekatarian?"

. . . Ekatarian. Ekatarian. For so long she'd been simply 'Katara'. I petite nickname that her brother and father teased her with while being informal at home. In this new land, Ekatarian wasn't her name. It was a big red target. She had to do away with it, make herself hate it, forget it. But Ekatarian manifested. She was always there in the back of her mind: pushing her towards the familiar. The dangerous.

She couldn't stop the swell in her heart from hearing her name. And the correct pronunciation of it.

"Princess Ekatarina . . . ?" The man repeated. His slanted silver eyes caught in a state of shellshock when they set on her –her face had removed all doubt from his mind. Katara knew she looked just like her mother, like Queen Kya in her days of adolescence when she lived in the Northern Watertribe. This man must have been a friend or teacher of hers then.

Her teeth sunk into her lip.

". . . Ekatarian?"

Katara chuckled.

"I thought I had grown so much . . ." Katara whispered. "I thought hearing that name wouldn't affect me any longer." The man sighed in relief, his shoulders noticeably fell then squared and he bowed again, much lower.

"It is an honor to meet you, your highness."

Katara nodded, the proper formality was familiar to her. Bowing, tight lipped smiles, secrets.

To say the least, Ekatarian was pleased.

* * *

"Everyone will be over joy to know that you're alive." Master Pakku gave a soft smile. For the past hour the Waterbending master had been pacing the floors talking about how the gods had blessed her to live so for long in foreign territory and the well-being of her family.

Hakoda father was still king.

Sokka had been crowned prince.

Kana was in good health.

With every sliver of good news, a sliver of Katara's resolve peeled off. And she fought it.

It was like a tightly wound noose around her neck.

While she threatened to jump, the floor threatened to open up beneath her.

"When may we start my lessons, Master Pakku?" she asked politely as possible without straining her voice.

"Soon," he answered gruffly. "Soon. Tomorrow night, when the moon is out. I am too weary from the journey to begin now, your highness."

Katara nodded and curled herself up further into the window seat. "Did Lord Iroh find a way for your safe arrival?" If this man had come this far just to ensure that she was indeed the princess the largest of the Four Nations was looking for, she wanted him to be safe for his trouble.

"And departure. I am allowed to take you with me when the time comes."

"Good . . ." she trailed off slowly.

"Princess Ekatarian . . ." Her gaze snapped back to Master Pakku's. "If you do not mind, I have but a few questions on the circumstances of the situation." She nodded. "Have you ever tried to get back to the Southern Kingdom?"

She shook her head. "There have always been guards around me, but I don't believe that anyone really knows who I am. Iroh knew?" Pakku nodded solemnly. "How?"

"You'll have to ask him about that. It is not my liberty to say, my lady."

"Of course . . ."

"Remember this, Ekatarian: you are a princess, you are royalty, you are Chief Hakoda's daughter." Pakku took her hands in his in a comforting gesture. "You were born to rule, not to live life in such a lowly stead."

"Really? I've been low a lot lately."

Pakku's eyes turned sad. "Your time in Egypt has made you weary."

"It's done more than that . . ."

Pakku smiled softly, Katara could practically feel the sympathy shining in his eyes.

"You will be reunited with your family once again, princess. Waterbenders are patient ones; we'll endure this trip of fate to get you home again."

"Thank you, Master Pakku."

* * *

Iroh and Pakku knew each other from an organization of peacekeepers called the White Lotus. They were famously known for being secretive, covert, and helping the world with its varying problems. Though in the hearts and minds of the paranoid persons of the Lands of Water and Ice as well as the Lands of Fire, they were spies and traitors sharing information from one nation to another.

Iroh and Pakku came to her room again the next day to talk with her and answer her questions.

Pakku didn't know the full extent of the Prince's plans, but Katara and Iroh agreed on a briefly exchanged glance that it was better that way. All Pakku knew was that Katara needed to learn Waterbending, and quickly.

He was skeptical but agreed.

* * *

In truth, Katara felt almost relieved to get away from Pakku for a while, albeit her alternative was the Prince –who seemed to be forever casted into a foul mood. She was still getting use to the idea of becoming a princess again, and Pakku was patient and polite was suffocating her with the 'your highness' and her true name.

Katara walked the length of the room, balancing a flat heavy stone on her head. She had barely a chance to oppose when the Prince crowned her with it and told her to walk and then, angry when it didn't fall, made her walk again. She steadied herself and glided. "You hardly have to teach me poise, your highness," Katara bent at the knees and made a slow turn with her toe pointed, her silk slipper sliding with ease around the floor in a dance-like motion. Her hands positioned outward from her body. "I am perfectly balanced."

She would have laughed at his expression if she wasn't afraid the stone would fall just then.

"Well, you're in a good mood." The Prince stepped forward with another block. "Don't show off, it's unsightly."

Katara rolled her eyes.

"And don't roll your eyes." He snapped. "Do you want my father to fall for you or not? With all your coarseness it's amazing he didn't sniff out the true desert rat in you."

"_Obviously_, I won't act like this in front of the Pharaoh. I _can _be sophisticated."

"Well, then act like I am the Pharaoh." The Prince growled. "Honestly, I'm royalty, can't you show some respect. Peasants have better manners."

Katara's jaw locked. "I was raised a noble when Ming adopted me."

The Prince's expression was unreadable and blasé. "Noble ladies don't work."

"That is why they are all unbearable, insufferable brats that flame with jealousy when someone else has the spotlight." Katara grumbled softly.

"That's another thing," The Prince balanced then dropped the other block onto her head, she yelped. "Don't speak like that. A girl who talks like that is not worth the royal presence, Ozai will leave you on the dance floor and you'll be further ridiculed."

Katara focused on balancing the blocks and with a hand, held them steady.

"Why did Ozai even pick me then if I'm so indelicate?"

The Prince stared at her for a long moment, arms crossing his chest.

"His choices in mistresses usual remain with servants or dancers, but the same methods work on all of them. He usually wines and dines his mistresses before luring into much deeper waters . . ." he murmured. "But with his 'wooing process' he tends to be alone with his mistresses, no guards and with that he seems to know that they won't hurt him. He if picked you, then he must have seen weakness in you."

Anger flushed at Katara's cheeks. "_What_! ?"

The Prince's face pinched. "Don't squawk, ladies of the court never squawk."

Katara's hand slipped sending the stone blocks off her head and onto the floor. Just missing the Prince's foot. The two blocked diminished to rocks once hitting the marble and the two jumped back at the same instance.

He yelped like a baby beaver-penguin.

"Why did you do that?" The Prince growled.

_Of course, _Katara thought bitterly. _He thinks I did it on purpose. Well, might as well act it._

"That's something a man learns quickly where I'm from," Katara muttered. "Never underestimate a woman and especially never insult her! If you want this alliance to work, you'll have to show me some respect too!"

"_Peasant_!" he hissed and she could have laughed at the irony. "You are weak for being offended so easily! The court women are going to tear you apart!"

Katara paused to look at him, looking at his red raged face.

He was right, in her heart she knew he was right, but . . .

"Well, this 'weak little thing' must get back to her killing lessons." She turned in the stone archway and curtseyed again to the Prince. "Sleep well, your highness." She continued laughing as she walked down the corridor to the staircase and then her room.

* * *

**Someone at all my cheesecake chocolate drizzled cookies and I'm going to kill someone.**

**At least I've got '80s music and _The Lost Boys _to hold me over until I have to go back to work tomorrow. It's fun! It's mini golf! But the A/C in that shed I work out of sucks. . .that and I get no cell phone reception. Well, at least I'm getting paid. That's the good side.**

**neh, I don't like this chapter very much, but it was needed. Zuko and Katara are still working on their relationship and when you think about it, Ozai would be so paranoid that he wouldn't have a mistress that was strong and well Katara.**

**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	14. Chapter 14

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Fourteen: Dancing in the Moonlight**_

* * *

Zuko watched from his bedroom window as she trained.

From her feeble first attempts, stretching her fingers and curling her wrists and trying to get the water—a particularly smooth element—to do her bidding. But the water was even more stubborn, dropping out of midair and splashing across her and whipping back at her in rebellious retaliation to every command she threw at it.

Even her mask collected tranquility couldn't hide the disappointment lingering in the depths of her blue, blue eyes.

"I never said this would be easy." Master Pakku muttered eerily into the night, his slanted silver eyes were harsher than he'd ever seen, dead set on the girl's form and clenched, white knuckled fists.

She exhaled through her teeth. "_I know,_"

Anyone could tell she was trying to remain calm.

"Let's do it again."

* * *

Zuko though it was funny how they all ate breakfast together like some dysfunctional extended family. The slaves set out large trays of food, Iroh and Pakku talked idly on politics and Zuko observed the surroundings and the people in the room.

"How is she fairing?"

"Oh, well,"

_Liar. _Zuko wanted to scoff, but knew well-enough to hold his tongue when the 'elders' spoke. Apparently what they said was important.

Chairs scrapped back against the tiled floors and Zuko's eyes elevated upward to find the source of the disturbance. No surprise, it was the dancer again.

He did not stand, but nodded a curt greeting.

As usual she looked tired, but well put together in the morning, her dress smooth, her curls perfectly coiffed and halfway pinned up into a mass at the back of her neck. She smiled at everyone—even him—and seated herself at the other head of the table in an eloquent fashion, straight across from Zuko, with Iroh and Pakku on either side of her.

"I trust you all slept well?"

The morning banter went on as usual and Zuko's gaze flinted out the window, bored and unattached from the conversation began to wonder how he was going to waste today. _Not much to do in the countryside . . . and the last thing I want is to spend more time with **her. **But, _he sighed. _Her manners are still appalling so I guess I have to. _

"Really now, why must a young woman lower herself so to wear that?"

Zuko eyes shot up to find Iroh and Pakku in a heated discussion over woman's clothes in this country—more specifically, Katara's—and Pakku looked obviously outraged and offended.

"It's not right for an unmarried woman to bare so much skin before so many men," he looked to Katara. "No offense to you Mistress."

"Of course," Katara scoffed, the words brittle in her mouth. "But, this is not the South Pole, Master Pakku. I can't very well walk around in a tiger-seal hide coat with wolf-fox fur trim. I'll die of a heat stroke."

Zuko didn't see anything wrong with the dress the little dancer was wearing. It was sheer, made out of silk and was a dazzling shade of crimson. Also, the fact that it was made by _his _royal dress makers played a big factor in how the dress was sanction. He decided to put his two cents in on the subject. "It appropriate for our culture." He answered simply, hoping it be enough and he could just eat his food.

Obviously, Pakku wouldn't give up so early seeing as though he decided to speak.

"Does your country have no bonds of modesty for its women?"

Zuko's golden eyes flickered upward. "We do, in fact. For the queen. As for peasants, slaves and dancers, no. The dress is fine, sit down." Katara rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, Zuko was about to comment before the man growled.

"You disrespect your ancestors, boy. And cover yourself. It is disgraceful to be in such a manner before a lady."

Zuko was ready to retort that it was common for men to not wear shirts this early in the morning but Katara and Iroh shot him matching looks of disapproval that made the words die in his throat. Katara smiled at Pakku broadly and waved him down to sit beside her.

"Sit, Master Pakku, you have to try this tea Lord Iroh got from the South Pole, its lovely." She poured him a glass and urged him to drink, making small talk and drawling his attention away from the conversation.

Pakku seemed to calm and murmured apologizes to her for his unseemly outburst.

. . . Who was royalty here again?

* * *

Katara was struggling to move the water around her body. It shook in the air and fell in large splats down onto the stone ground. Her arms shook with effort and raised her arms higher; trying to move it downward into a graceful sweeping motion like Master Pakku had demonstrated and left her to twenty minutes ago.

She cursed under her breath and began to move her arms in a circular motion around her head. Forcing the water to move with her as it struggled and fought against the moves Katara demanded of it.

"Still watching her, Prince Zuko?" The young monarch whirled around to find his uncle standing behind him.

"I—" Iroh snickered softly and put a finger to his lips and drew him out of sight of the window and into the shadowy torchlight of the room. Iroh raised a brow at the dimmed lights and Zuko grumbled, "I didn't want to be seen."

"Very well," Iroh mused and paused when he heard the girl's enraged shriek. "How is she doing really?"

"Terrible."

"Help her then."

"What?"

"She needs help mastering this, my Prince, you must help her. You two are in this together."

"We _all _are." Zuko snarled sternly and his uncle simply bobbed his head in regards.

"But, I can't always be there; like I said the trouble with the southern border . . . I should be expecting to be called to duty at any given time. I need you to be prepared to rely on her to do her job."

Iroh disappeared through his open door again and his quiet walk shuffled down the flagstone hall to his chambers. Zuko wanted to yell in retaliation, but _of course _the man was right. He had to work on their 'trust' issue, bond, agreement. Still he'd like this all just to be over and done with but he figured this was just as well.

He needed to learn to talk to people he didn't like anyway.

As the night ebbed on, Zuko remained in his shadowy hideaway until she went to sleep.

* * *

The third night, he watched from the opening leading down into the kitchen, having first to walk through the slave's quarters to get there, it was well worth the odd looks and gap mouth stares. If his gaze lingered on them too long could see the disobedient slaves cut out tongues, turning their mouths into black pits outlined by yellowed and decayed teeth. He more often than not, tried to divert his gaze from their hideousness. He ordered them all to sleep and not to speak a word of him being there—in woe of the contradictions.

He found Katara as she was the night before, standing in front of two large jugs full of dish water with Master Pakku. From the faint lights coming from the open side door, he could see the man's displeased expression and the girl's soaked skirts.

"An Earthbender roots to the ground, an Airbender moves with the breeze, and Firebenders fuel with their rage. A Waterbender has to move with the element. Move like water. Feel it, hold it, command it." Pakku stated before walking back into the torch lit house.

The girl sighed again and looked back to the water spilled across the stones.

She positioned her hands and started to lift—Zuko would give her that, she never gave up—and the water gathered pouring upward and hovering above the ground. Once formed into an orb she tried to move it higher, the muscles in her arms clenching tightly like coils, and the water fell back across the ground.

She growled.

"You're too stiff." He called down, taking her off-guard, making her jump. She wheeled around to glare at him and he simply repeated. "You're too stiff. If you keep up like that you're going to wear yourself out."

Her hands fell to her hips and her shoulders squared. Now Zuko almost rolled _his _eyes.

"So it is indeed _not _going well."

"Indeed." She nodded, her full lips tightening into a thin line and her jaw clenching ever so slightly.

"What are your thoughts on the matter?" Zuko inquired, recalling that they _were _supposed to share these things with each other.

"Nothing," She seemed to dismiss him, hands falling away from her waist and turning her back to him to return to her 'training' attempts.

"Katara,"

The second time he said her foreign name, he sounded like he was _pleading. _

She looked at him, surprised to say the least.

"Tell me, complain if you dare, but you have to share these things with me." Zuko made a gesture that almost looked like he was summoning fire, but caught the resistance in her eyes. "Now. Talk." He commanded and her eyes narrowed.

"Don't say my name."

"Really, than what shall I call you?" He challenged.

She looked at a loss for a moment and sighed. "Just don't say it; every time you do it's just too strange. It's probably your accent, but it sounds fine when Iroh says it." His eye twitched.

Alright, enough stalling.

"Tell me what's wrong, _now._" He quipped. "I can't help you if you don't tell me."

Alright, now she looked shocked. Wonderful.

"You're . . . gonna help me?" She pointed between him and her and Zuko clenched his teeth and counted back from ten.

"Yesss," he hissed _happily. _"I am _more _than _prepared _to _help you_."

His words were dripped in poison and he hoped she knew it.

"Iroh put you up to this, didn't—?"

"Shut up! Just tell me what you need help with so we can get this over with!" He snarled, flames dancing behind his eyes.

She didn't even flinch.

"Alright," she nodded and looked disdainfully down at the soggy sand covered ground. "This is hopeless, I won't be able to master water, let alone _ice _in a week." Which was true, it was nearly impossible for anyone to master any technique in such a short amount of time, especially under pressure. Zuko would have to find a way to contradict that statistic because, damnit all, they were running out of time.

"I see," Running a finger brazenly over his lower lip, he called to memory the few Waterbending he'd actually seen in his lifetime, it was a bit like Firebending, actually. The movements were fluid, graceful and dance-like in their own odd way.

_Hmm, _He glanced up at the girl, her body lithe and muscled from a near lifetime of dancing lessons and performances under her belt. _Dance-like._

"Try dancing." Katara gave him a look. "Just do it."

"Dance? You want me to dance?"

"Dance," he restated. "And move the water."

"Alright,"

Katara moved fluently, curling her wrist the water rose from the ground and shaped into a perfect sphere. She continued moving, dancing, the water morphed into a snake-like shape curled around her body. When her arms snapped forward, it collided into the wall.

"I did it . . ." she whispered almost to herself in utter awe, her blue eyes wide and adoring with triumph. "I did it." She repeated, staring at the water trickling down the wall and then her hands. "I finally . . ." She seemed to pause in her moment of awe and glanced at him.

Zuko nearly jumped back when a slow, small smile spread across her lips. "Thank you."

He said nothing.

She took off in a fury of dramatic movement, throwing water at every dry object in the garden, taking the time to aim and then shot forward in a jolt, smiling stretching across her face, and laughing as she did so, spinning around launching attacks from everywhere. The water hung heavily in the air around her, mingling on her dark skin and dampening her curled locks that swung around her and tumbled heavily down her back.

_Beautiful . . . _Zuko mused with a raised brow and watched as she moved the water around her, dance-like and poise with a refine mesmeric quality to her movements.

She was a natural.

* * *

At breakfast the next morning Master Pakku was happy to report that Katara was improving rapidly. Iroh smiled, acting like he hadn't the clue as to _why._

"That's _wonderful, _Pakku. Isn't it Zuko?"

Zuko nodded and kept his eyes trained on his plate as the conversation picked up around him and breakfast dragged on. Once or twice he let his graze rise up across the table to her. Her hair was free down her shoulders in loose ringlets that bounced and waved whilst she moved, laughed, or chatted with Pakku and then switched to Iroh.

Her blue eyes were alight with life and joy . . .

He stopped himself. _She's getting too cushy, _he snapped his fingers, summoning the slaves to clear the table. Pakku and Iroh withhold their food and have it brought into a private room for them to finish.

"Mistress Katara will you be joining us?" Pakku asked politely.

Katara looked to her plate and then to Zuko who shook his head. "No," she answered efficiently. "I have to speak with the Prince for awhile, don't wait for me."

Pakku glanced between the two, rose and exited the dining area with a slave trailing after him with his plate. Iroh cast a glance over his shoulder and waved gently. "Tell her everything we talked about." Zuko nodded and the doors on all sides of them shut.

They were completely alone.

"So," she started softly. "What is the plan for Ozai exactly?"

"You kill Ozai."

"Oh, alright. So: 'hello your highness, nice to meet you. **_Die!_**"

Zuko kept his face perfectly neutral. "You kill him, when I say so. I'll tell you face-to-face, so if you get a letter saying to kill Ozai, don't. Report the letter."

"A letter?"

"It was the last attempts. Everyone wants to see my father dead, it doesn't matter who does it as long as it's done."

"Very well," she nodded, but Zuko caught the slip up.

The slight line in her forehead caused by her left brow.

"You're doing the right thing." He assured but didn't quite know why.

She gave a weak, blasé smile and added a seductive curl to her voice all the while batting her heavily fringed lashes. She leaned forward against the table, leeringly and smiled wider. "Of course, Your Majesty."

* * *

**Ngh, this chapter sucks and I know it too. **

**Tell me if you want me to add anything to future chapters to prevent chapter-suck. Or if anyone's up for being a Beta, that's wonderful!**

**I just really wanted to get it out there because I want the sotry to flow fast and, yes, they'll be going to the palace next chapter!**

**Tell me, how do you feel about JET showing up to stir up some hell? I'm not telling you how he'll show up, but he will.**

**Rant Reason this Took So long: I hate most tourist, especially the ones who can't seem to operate a freakin' turn-signal. But I love my job. I love my job. I love seeing the guests at the hotel and smiling at the little kids and running the breakfast buffet and running the mini golf booth and being hit on by an out of town cowboy cutie (nothings better than a blonde southern Illinios boy, trust me) and the adorable NFL worthy boy I work with. I threw a paper ball at him today and demanded that he speaks more cause damn he's got some pretty eyes. I'm single and I'm enjoying it. Damn supposed 'boyfriend' (asked me out then started calling me his girlfriend _which I_ _hated_) never called me back about our date so I'm footloose and learned my lesson about freshmen boys. **

**Re-Rant: And another thing! I still have that unholsome attraction to hot-jerks (including my problems with _staring _at said hot-jerks). *head desk* To said hot-jerk: Get out of my head! Stop showing up in my dreams and looking at me _that way. _Are you impared! ? *head desk, again* I think its a problem that I checked out his FaceBook page . . . and drove around his side of town . . . and keep thinking about the time I called him pathetic and a number of other things and the look on his face as an after result. I could tell you stories abou this guy. Damn you! Go back to your freakin' bottle blonde/cheerleader/amazingly skinny/cookie cutter girlfriend. **

**Too many freakin' warring emotions, will channel this into writing and save myself a broken heart. **

**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	15. Chapter 15

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Fifteen: Foreign Flux**_

* * *

The beauty treatments started with a steaming bath that seared her skin and felt too hot for the Egyptian weather. But she learned to be thankful for it once the slave women dumped a bucket of ice water over her head and began to scrub vigorously at her skin with soft sponges and scented soaps. Oils were massaged into her scalp, her nails were reshaped, any imperfect was smoothed over.

After she was blotted dry and wrapped in a towel, the Prince entered the bathhouse were a sever sternness in his features that made him look older than he really was.

Katara's jaw locked and pulled the floor sweeping towel around her body as soon as she spotted him. "What are you doing here?" she hissed, not fazed by the fact that the slaves were now giving her wide eyed stares of surprise.

The Prince, however, was intimidated by her hostility. "I'm here to oversee your transformation to a lady . . . though I still think some more etiquette will help your benefit."

Her eyebrows rose.

The style for Egyptian woman to wear their hair was a perfect blade straight or tamed high into a topknot. Katara knew very well that her hair could go through no such torture—her stubborn curls wouldn't allow themselves to be made docile—and Zuko seemed to know that to.

"We'll need you to look foreign, but not too much so. You need to pass _at least _as a bastard daughter of some great lord who fell for a foreign woman."

She wasn't sure how to take that comment, it felt too politically correct.

Not insulting yet . . . she scowled for good measure.

The slave women trimmed the ends of her hair, rubbed oil into the curls and formed them into perfect doll-like ringlets. Though after a quick pull at them all they loosened, unraveled some, and began to look more natural. They were then gathered at the base of her neck, save for a spiraling curl of two to shape her face, and a gold netting was placed over the back of her head, studded with ruby pins to keep it in place.

Her make-up was next: no paling powder or blush was used as to the Prince's instruction and instead persuaded the nimble fingered slave woman to outline Katara's eyes with kohl and brighten them with gold eyelid shadow—the glittery powder reminded her of the stage make up the Midnight Dancer's used, but instead it wasn't applied heavily, more of a light sweep over her eye. Her lips were painted red—not overly glossy or dull paint—making her full mouth stand out across her tan skin.

Next were her clothes.

The dress was the color of passion red, and flowed down to her ankles and shaped her body at her waist before falling dead straight over her hips. A thick gold belt bejeweled with diamonds and rubies was added to show a wealthy status; similar bangles were slipped onto her arms and finally a soft crimson shawl with made of gossamer with thin gold tarnish nipping at the edges—the Prince swore to her if she lost or damaged any of them, he'd murder her. Last minute, the Prince reached into his pocket and touched her ear, slipping on the dangling rubies earrings Iroh had given her months prior, in what seemed like another life.

She'd forgotten she had them with her.

When Katara took this all in while she looked in the mirror, she realized something.

He had made her beautiful.

* * *

"Thank you for everything, Master Pakku." Katara bowed to the elder man standing in the foyer of Iroh's mansion.

The man's austere features were drawn up and ready for a fight, his eyes scanned over her and frowned slightly—not approving of the dress, but wouldn't dare say anything against it—and cleared his throat, his head jerking slightly to remove a straying braid of hair from his shoulder.

They would be leaving for the palace now, without Iroh—he promised to meet them at the party tonight.

"My lady," he began, carefully minding that the Prince wasn't in the room. "Why is it that you must go to the palace where your greatest enemy dwells? Surely, you do not agree to this nonsense."

Katara pressed her lips together, careful not to smudge her make-up—it could be such a troubling thing, where on one hand in enhanced your best features whilst on others if it smudged you'd look like an idiot. Her lips parted.

"Well, I've made a deal with the princes and in exchange for my—for _our_—safe arrival back to our homeland I must first kill the reigning King."

Yes, because _that _would go over _so well._

Katara shook off her thought to keep from smiling. She had a pre-rehearsed explanation for her 'unnecessary' trip to the palace.

"I need to do some searching around the palace. Learn their ways, get some more information and besides I was already invited. That last thing we need is the Pharaoh looking for me."

Oh, the _irony._

_Stop it. _She ordered herself and cautiously studied Pakku's unwavering expression of disapproval.

"It is all for naught, Princess Ekatarian." Pakku mumbled, but sighed. "But you'll just go anyway won't you?"

Katara didn't nod. Princesses didn't have to nod to confirm being rebellious.

Pakku sighed and reached into his robes, withdrawing a long cord with a dipping sapphire blue vial with a tiny star charm dangling from it.

"Here, take it," Pakku pressed the vial into her hand. "I know I didn't give you any healing training but I have a feeling you will need this." Pakku continued to explain how to use the water and how to heal. "That is a vial of the purest ocean water, I pray you will use it well Princess."

"I will Master Pakku, thank you." Katara nodded and tried to ignore the concern that shone brightly in Pakku's silver eyes.

_No, _she commanded Ekatarian to the back of her mind, banished, no talking. _I cannot leave yet, I've made a promise._

Pakku shuffled down onto one knee and took her hand in his, bowing his head to it. "I pray no ill fortune befalls you my Princess."

Katara bit her lips together. "I pray for the same for you." She knelt down, taking the man's shoulders and nudging for him to stand. "If I should not, go to my family; please tell my family I love them."

Pakku nodded. "Of course, my lady."

She caught the faint noise of the Prince descending the steps and looked over to him, regally drawn and composed. He always looked very sure of himself.

They nodded to each other in acknowledgment.

It was game on.

* * *

"Remember this," the Prince whispered so that the coachman wouldn't hear. "Act like there is nowhere else in the world you'd rather be."

"Got it." Katara nodded, her eyes hardened in determination upon the lights of the palace from over the Prince's shoulder—they had once served as beautiful beacons on the twisted night road, but not only glowed like the fires that had burned her throughout the years—and watched their carriage pull around to a secret entrance where the Prince wouldn't be seen making such a public entrance with a woman who wasn't his wife nor fiancée.

Suddenly it hit Katara that this was all happening. She'd been trained, pampered and sent out like a battleship to sea surrounded by cannons. She'd come to kill someone. She actually had to kill someone! And not just any someone, the King!—

"I will present you to the King and I will relinquish you to him for the night. Don't worry; he never beds any of the girls on the first night."

"Alright."

—She just had to shove the words out, forget his words. Picture King Ozai—the slimy bastard—and think of everything he's done. Yes, think of being kidnapped, the friends that died at his command, her guards he slaughtered, her family—

Unconsciously, she touched the vial that she'd tucked into her bodice and wondered if it was well-hidden. She'd just have to risk it.

The Prince seemed the fidget and straightened his robes for the second time and smoothed his topknot—Katara always thought the style on a man was odd, also she'd never seen the Prince with a topknot—and looked to Katara again with a sneaky side glance. His eyes fell to her lips and Katara shied away.

The Prince's body turned towards hers.

"Stop biting your lips." He deadpanned and raised his hands to either side of her face, rearranging her curls and untangling a strand from one of her earrings. "You're impossible . . ."

He was really close to her, Katara mused. She could feel the heat of his body, the whisper of his breath, the bright butterscotch of his eyes. Too close, she decided.

Katara grabbed his wrists and shoved them back towards him, pinning them back to his body and scooting away from him as far as she could on the velvet red seat.

The Prince raised an eyebrow. "What was that?"

"I don't like being touched unnecessarily," Katara muttered suddenly very interested in the paths of fire lilies lining the walkway. "Or being near people in general."

"Well, you're going to have a whole slew of people near you tonight."

"I won't tolerate it anymore than necessary." Katara quipped back and the Prince didn't have time to reply because they'd reached their destination. His eyes burned angry holes into the side of her head, then closed a moment, the rigid flesh of his scar and nose bunched and tightened and hardened in his frustration, then he breathed—his face smoothing over and his woes forgotten. The door opened and his slid out first, a moment later, offering a hand to her to help her out.

She allowed it only because she needed help only. Only because of that.

* * *

They hadn't even been in this banquet hall ten minutes and already there was gossip circulating the room.

The King and Queen had yet to make an appearance tonight. Would they even bother? Someone heard shouting from the royal wing of the palace. Who was that girl on the Prince's arm?

She had to ignore their too-loud chatter if she was going to survive the night.

Instead of a moonlit festival outdoors like the last time she'd come to the palace—nearly a week or so ago—, this banquet was held inside; in a room made of ruby-and-gold lining and polished pale gold marble floors and columns that shined. The walls were hung with expensive paintings of ancestor's past and iron wrought torches ebbed with rubies at the handle.

The people were even more beautiful—if you like the pale cold skin, gold eyes and ink black hair.

Woman mainly wore red or gold, but the occasion foreign colored gown would catch Katara's attention and she'd find foreign features to match the colors—blonde hair belonging to the natural Great Plains, narrow eyes belonging to the Chinese. Both hailed from the Lands of Wind or the Lands of Earth.

Diplomat candidate wives.

Offered up as sacrificial lambs so that their Nation—or at least a part of it—wouldn't have to suffer.

"I suspect the King arranges these marriages," Katara muttered to the Prince's listening ear. "For if they were intended to marry you, they'd tarnish your perfect bloodline." She teased mercilessly and the Prince rolled his eyes.

"No."

"No what?"

"No, we do not talk about it." He was forcing the frown; she could see it at the corners of his lips slowly uplifting. He was irate that she would point it out so blatantly, but impressed that she did manage to put two and two together.

"Prince Zuko?" a voice called from behind them forcing the two to turn to find a dark haired girl no older than Zuko staring blankly at their entwined arms and close proximity.

Now, Katara might be seeing things but she swore she saw a flash in those deep bottomless eyes.

Part of her reminded Katara of Suki with the tilt of the cheek and the shape of the face, but her ravenous hair canceled that notion and her austere eyes fixated upon Katara's form; drinking in the dress, the jewels, and her obvious foreign features. Obviously, the noblewoman didn't know what to think of her.

"Ah," Zuko coughed a little. "Mistress Katara this is the Lady Mai. Lady Mai, this is Mistress Katara. She's a friend of my uncle's." He added quickly, gesturing to each woman smoothly.

"Pleasure." Mai nodded to her politely and took the Prince's arm whilst it was still outstretched. "Forgive me, but I must steal his royal highness for a moment."

The look in his eyes read panic and he looked to Katara, almost as if for help, which Katara thought was amusing. "Not at all." She smiled and gave a graceful curtsey. "My apologies for keeping him so long."

"Thank you." Lady Mai drawled.

She watched; choking on laughter as the girl dragged the Prince away, hastily.

Well, the girl was most obviously not Princess Azula. Maybe she was Prince Zuko's fiancée? She raised an eyebrow at the thought. He didn't seem like the type to propose so early, or have a betrothed lined up for them. Then again she recalled one or two possible engagements between her and a few other tribal boys back when she was small.

Suddenly, the whispers and the music died down, the crowd began to slowly move and inch away.

She felt a fiery hot presences from behind her and turned to find know other than the Pharaoh looming over her, with a crowning headpiece in his half-up topknot, gleaming like the king of thieves in his expensive jewels and heavy robes.

"My lady, may I have this dance?"

His voice was strong, powerful, commanding like booming thunder. She began to feel her knees shake when he extended a hand to her.

Katara stared wide-eyed at the king for another fraction of a second and quickly remembered her place. _Kill the King. _She shook her head. _No, seduce the King. _She pulled on her best sultry smile that she practiced for hours in the mirror back at the House, the smooth curve of her lips and the slight hood of her eyes: beautiful.

She usually saved it for her best customers.

"You may."

They danced.

* * *

"I've never seen you in court before."

"Oh, but you have. That night a near fortnight ago, the foreign dancer you watch with such admiration."

"Yes," a dark chuckle. "Your eyes tell all."

"What do they say to you?"

"You are a noble and broken soul. You need someone to care for you."

". . . oh, whomever would care for me?"

"I have a few ideas."

* * *

Hours later, the King had managed to corner her into a shaded corner of the room where they faced the crowd, pretending to save a civil conversation, but Katara wondered in her mind if any of the visitant gossips or guards could see the way their King pressed against her, or brushed his hand over the back of her neck—if only he knew that the gooseflesh that rose under his fingers was in disgust rather than arousal. Honestly, was everyone in Egypt mad? Did they honestly think she was having a casual tête-à-tête with the King?

Oh, she prayed to Tui and La that they'd all die slow, painful deaths.

"My lady," the Pharaoh purred. "May I make a personal query?"

It wasn't as if she could say no.

"What do you wish to ask me?" Katara murmured voice equally husky and refraining the urge to smack the monarch's finely sculpted face with the back of her hand. His fingers crept along the base of her spine, drawling lazy circles of the silken material of the dress—she'd have to burn it later.

"I want to know about you," he whispered into her ear—making her jump when she realized he'd bent down to her ear—and his lips touched the scarlet flushed cartilage. "I want to know of your life, your deepest desires, your past lovers, if any," the hand on her back had already begun to make the journey from her back to the side of her hip, the top of her thigh and lower. "Have had you."

_—She gulped for air. Wide eyes obscured by her ravaged mess of knotted and blood clumped hair, but they weren't unseeing. She could see everything. From the wide-eyed and sobbing children behind the steel rods that kept them encased in their own dank dark box where there very gender kept them safe, to the blood splattered mess across her thighs and juncture in between_—

Katara wrenched herself from the Pharaoh's grasp, much to his brow raised surprise, but Katara was a brilliant actress. She could keep up this faux dance of seduction so long as he didn't question her masque.

"Your Highness," she whispered her voice was childishly girlish but unlinking of her original husky tone lingered beneath the translucent surface of her voice. "It seems highly improper to ask a woman of my unmarried status that question." Her voice lowered even more in feigning hurt. "I thought you held no prejudice to my profession."

"It's an improbable question." Ozai smirked, catching her game like a cat batting playfully at a mouse.

Katara—with gridded teeth—forced a slow, seductive smile to pull at her lips but was quick to hide it with a delicate clearing of her throat, lifting the sheer cloth of her shawl to her lips. She leant upward a little and whispered, "Good things come to those who wait."

And turned from their private corner towards the exit.

While she was poised and perfect and personable on the outside, on the inside she was screaming. How could she say something like that? And to him! She was screaming in outrage in betrayal of herself, of everyone, of her people.

How _messed up_ did one have to be to be able to keep it all together like this? To say those things and pretend to mean them? It didn't matter if she was pretending, she still said them. Instead of outright spitting in his eye and stabbing him repeatedly with a jagged bit of ice, she was so enraged she felt as though she could carry out the Prince's request right then and there.

_Dangerous emotions. _

She didn't care! Right now the only working logical part of her mind was carrying her far, far, _far _away from these pampered Egyptian _aristocrats _before she killed each and every last one of them with her bare, manicured hands.

Sadly, the Prince wouldn't agree with the logical part of her mind and had already made a beeline to the door to stop her.

"Where do you think you're going?" the Prince hissed lowly, taking Katara's arm and stopping her from reaching the exit, in the process tugging her behind a pillar where they wouldn't be seen—he'd been watching throughout the night, nodding and making sure she didn't make a break for it. Katara's head inclined and her teeth dug into her lip subtly, she breathed. The Prince's face read no other emotion, save irritation for forcing him to leave his fiancée on the dance floor. "Well," he hissed. "Out with it."

"He wants to know my life story."

Gold eyes flared in unreadable fury. "Then tell him."

"Oh, sure, tell him that his 'noble and broken' new mistress came to his country on a slave ship." Katara barked, but managed to keep her voice at a whisper. "Which is not only—oh, I don't know—_illegal, _but is alsoa_ lovely_ sort of humble upbringing."

The Prince's expression changed drastically. His mouth was a thin line; his eyes were two pools of questioning and curious gold. This was the first time she'd ever seen him like this. "You came here on a slave ship?" He nearly whispered.

Katara stared back, mouth opening and closing. Then her jaw locked and her fingers clenched the skirts of her dress. "Well, I guess you didn't know everything about me."

She then marched away in the flurry of silken red skirts and shining gems.

* * *

**Forgot to Post This! Ekatarian say it like (eeh-Kat-rrr-e-ann)**

**205 REVIEWS! Thank you all so much for supporting my story over these years (don't worry this isn't a farwell note, I'm just saying)**

**It's this stories B-day! Two years old! Weeeeee!**

******Anyway, here I am all registered for my big Junior year of high school and I would like to apologize that this story wasn't finished before summer was over. **

******About Story: I hope I captured Katara's hatred for the King *sarcasm* If she hated him anymore he'd drop dead. He seems to think she's weak, but Ozai is a paranoid schizo in my stories so HA! Persoanlly, I'll admit Mai is awesome, but not whilst I am shipping Zutara! **

**Rant: While I am nearly done with my boy drama (I had a dream the hot-jerk kidnapped me and locked me in a maze and kept showing up with these riddle as I tried to get out, bastard tied me up and I had to steal a car), my mother is making every worse with her comments. And yes, the boy drama is still going because guess what? Hot-jerk works at the same hotel as me . . . the kitchen is no longer safe to hide in.**

**Other than that it's a rainy day and I'm going to watch _Star Trek _and await reviews. **

**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

_**~QueenVamp**_


	16. Chapter 16

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Sixteen: Mirthless Courtship**_

* * *

Prince Zuko stomped out of the party after her—the brushes of music and silk fabric ripping past him until he was in the diffuse of the dark corridor where far spaced torchlight's created an eerie path back to the guest apartments.

It was empty all but for the lone beautiful dancer that was glaring daggers at any direction, realizing she had no idea where her room was.

Zuko gently took her arm, and dragged her down the dark corridor to her room.

She didn't say a word, so neither did he.

* * *

"This room will be yours." He unlocked a narrow redwood door to a small but eloquent room with hardwood floors, a four-poster canopy bed with red curtaining draping all around the sides to shield the sleeping person from the prying eyes of the outside world, a small sitting area near a narrow window with a table to eat her meals on and a small fireplace to keep her warm on the off chance Egypt became blisteringly freezing.

"Pretty." The dancer nodded smoothly, eyes glazing around the room looking genuinely pleased that it was small which he had been aiming for. Not her being happy, but a small room.

The fact that there was very little red, however, was just a trip of luck. Perhaps misfortune too, he did not want the girl to think he was growing fond of her in any way. She didn't seem to notice though.

"So," Katara slid forward, touching the wood of the furniture and the bed hangings. "It's really begun. This entire assassination comes down to these few days."

Zuko swallowed thickly and closed the door behind him, daring a few strides into the room near the dead fireplace to accommodate one of the two chairs there. "Yes, and I think it may be time for another talk of our worries."

The blue-eyed dancer looked at him and sighed, knowing he was right even while he questioned it. "I suppose you want me to start?"

"That would be reasonable." He mumbled, not wanting to share like he had last time. He was inquisitive furthermore, her behavior in the carriage, and again with his father, she acted nothing like herself. A great actress. The cool and untouchable woman.

"With all due respect, your highness," her voice was soft and acidic, like slow acting poison that rested at the rim of your glass killed you slowly once it entered your belly. "If you are allowed to keep your secrets, I may keep mine."

Zuko's eyes narrowed at this dangerously, his mouth set at a hard line. "And what secrets should you withhold?" He could feel his temper about to grate.

She was, yet again, not at all fazed by the scar or how it looked when he glared. He supposed he should be use to it by now, but it always shocked him how she would simply glare right back like his face was normal and carry on yelling at him. Then again, she only knew him with his scarred face. She'd never seen him as the fresh faced youth whose words of rebellion cost him his honor and an eternal bane of what he'd done.

"Ones that are within my liberties, ones that I'm not obligated to share even under our agreement. All you need to know is I _don't like_ being _touched. _In any way." Her icy blue eyes hailed down rainstorms upon him and twisted him up into ocean storms strong enough to sink ships.

Zuko huffed frustrated and decided to just _let it go._

* * *

They continued to go back and forth for a few hours on the merits of waiting and killing slowly and what would happen to her after the assassination was done.

"And once your name is cleared, you will be banished from Egypt—by me—and my Uncle will travel with you to the border with Master Pakku and a few other illegal immigrants to the Boiling Rock prisoner port. Once you reach there, another boat will be waiting for you and you'll be returned to your home and remain there for the remainder of your life, docile. Are we clear?"

Something in the girl's eyes. The way they sparkled and flashed at the mentions of going home didn't sit with him. Animatedly he began another of his several back-up plans for her if she didn't complete the mission.

In this one: she'd only think she was going on the boat, and a different guide—foreign but trustworthy—will lead them to the boat taking them to the Boiling Rock and once they pulled up onto shores and were ambushed, Pakku and the dancer would realize neither could use their bending for their guide had been slipping light doses of chi blockers into their food for the past week. Then they'd be taken to a cell and Zuko would wait outside the doors to speak briefly with them and kill that shine in the dancer's eye.

This was the monopoly he was born to play and play it well he did.

The dancer was just a girl you picked up the rules and took guesses on the steps she took.

The dancer's winsome figure stuck in his mind like wet sand to fine cotton. He did not hate her, no. His feelings for her were nonexistent, but there was something about her that seemed to cry out to him like a child to a mother. A silent plea for help.

Her eyes flickered up from the steady fire in the hearth to mingle with his and they silently watched each other. The flames danced across her skin and whipped light at her eyes.

Blue eyes.

Such a taboo color.

A sharp rap came to the door made them both jump.

Her head craned around to look at the door almost unsure if she should answer and looked to Zuko as he stood and put a finger to his lips and motioned for her to follow.

Zuko stayed hidden behind the door, his back flat to the smooth red stone wall and had the girl answer the door—from between the cracks he could see two dark hooded men; one as plump as his uncle and the other built like a Earthbender.

His father's advisor and his guard.

Zuko eyed the cloak thrown over Bellum's thick arm and his wry pig-scrunched face. He had been sent to do this often, Zuko always managed to just catch him as a child. Taking young girls, rich and poor, to his bed chambers. Only once a few years ago did Zuko see his mother being taken.

"The Pharaoh wishes you come to his bed tonight." Bellum's craggily voice carried a pitch too high yet somehow deep. Either way it made both Zuko and the girl wince at its harsh sound before resisting what the uncanny voice meant.

"Wha . . . ?" Zuko watched the girl's grasp go white-knuckled gripping at the doorframe.

"Come quickly, we do not want the remaining guest to catch the light."

Zuko strained his neck to watch. _No, it's not time yet. We're not ready. They'll know it's her. It's too soon!_

"A thousand pardons my lords, but I must decline." That made all three of them jump.

Deny the king? It was suicide!

But the girl kept talking.

"While I was laying abed, you see, I had a vision. Of the Great Agni, he tells me that he feels I have not been a submissive follower of his divine rule. I am afraid I must decline because I must go to his temple straight away."

That made him freeze. He just stared, watching Bellum's face flush with embarrassment and bow three times—despite his practices, he was deeply religious, which was why Ozai kept him around. For appearances.

Once the door was shut, the girl took a breath, a dithering drop and rise of her shoulders. She didn't look at him. "He always use to walk by the House, he would scorn us, but complement us for our beauty and those of us who remained chaste."

Zuko's face screw up and he cocked his head to the side. "So, you're a virgin?"

"Aren't you?" She shot back and Zuko rolled his eyes, and stepped forward, suddenly very tired.

Exasperated, he laid a hand on her shoulder and locked eyes with her, like his uncle had when he was younger as a term of endearment. "You did very well. The Pharaoh will not send Bellum to collect you again, do not worry of it." He murmured, looking into the girl's wide eyes, rosette lips and the eloquent perfection of her features. The shock and unease in them.

He was touching her shoulder. She hadn't shoved him away yet, but she looked unease.

_No. No you couldn't possibly. _Zuko sneered to himself and removed his hand from her shoulder and took a full step back from her, closing his eyes and coughing into his fist, he announced that she should go to bed and he would retire too.

When he turned on his heel however and started heading for the opposite way to the door, the girl had the orneriness to tell him he was going the wrong way.

"No, I am very sure I can find my way to my room from here." Zuko pushed in a rock with ease of the heel of his palm and a small stone door swung open to reveal a twisted narrow corridor.

He stepped in and heard her protest.

"Wait, our rooms are _conjoined_?"

Zuko looked over his shoulder at her lazily. "Nonsense. This connects to many rooms. I just happen to know about them."

He bid her good night before shutting the door behind him.

* * *

Weeks rolled by, and Ozai did not call on the dancer again—though he was still very interested, Zuko could see it in his eyes. No one even came to her door, not even a servant. Zuko began to spend all his time when he should be asleep in the girl's room, talking over their plan, or sometimes not even talking at all.

They were content with the quiet.

"What's this I hear about a party?" She asked one bright morning he came through the secret door to visit her, her breakfast was half-eaten and pushed aside and she was dressed for the morning like the rest of the Egyptian court. Zuko's eyes settled on the food again.

"Why did you eat? The court was going to break their fast in the garden."

She turned her nose up. "That food is not good for one's body, it makes those diplomats fat and I must stay nimble."

He sighed and she asked her question again, albeit more annoyed than before. She still hadn't gotten over the fact that her room led to many others.

"It's a costume party in honor of my sister Azula on her sixteenth birthday." Zuko waved his hand over to the bed, where the maids had laid out a dress he'd requested from the royal dress maker.

"This is my costume? It looks like a ceremonial wedding gown from the western Lands of Earth." She chuckled to herself, touching the gentle embroidery of the white dress and the diamonds stitched into the material. The long sleeves were translucent gossamer, thin and wavering like the fins of a koi fish.

"No it's a koi fish."

She gave him a funny look.

"I researched your heritage; your people worship gods who take form in koi fish to teach you about the delicate balance of life and death. I suppose this is La, the white one. It should impress the Pharaoh."

"Wrong." She lifted her gaze to meet his. "Our tribe has originally two gods, Tui and La, but we shower special treatment on the other. The northern tribe worships La. My tribe worships Tui, the darker one. I'm sure _that_ would impress him more."

He glared at her. Couldn't she just thank him? "Well, for tonight, pretend you're a northerner."

He snapped the door shut as if to end the argument, but she wouldn't have that and he heard something hard—and _breakable_—connect with the secret door once he shut it.

* * *

**I've been writing this story since before I could write.**

**I forgot what I use to call it, but I always played in this world, this is where my imaginary friends were. This story is my baby. My mom showed me a video of when I was little and I was pretending to be Ursa's character, I said to the camera, I'm making myself pretty for my husband and I was quiet and I wrapped blankets around me like long dresses, and then I was Katara's character, running away and always looking over her shoulder. And that's how I remembered. I was very into mixing ethnic cultures when I was little because I liked to piece things together.**

**About Katara's Excuse: King Henry the VIII, his second wife, Anne, refused to sleep with him before they were married because it was an abomination before God and she made secret motives. Like Katara. Except she doesn't like Ozai. Period.**

**About name: Bellum is Latin for 'War', I used this as a surname for one of my OC's.**

**Sorry this took a while to get up, I literally thought this thing would write itself. So many more ideas!**

**Rant: Fighting with friends. And YES I ENJOY BEING INSANE! I'm having the freakin' time of my life here!**

* * *

**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **Katara attends the masque, where she meets Zuko's infamous sister, Princess Azula, in her bloody birthday bash and a masked man with a vandetta as deep as blood against the Pharaoh. And the state of Queen Ursa is revealed!

* * *

**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	17. Chapter 17

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Seventeen: Ire of Green**_

* * *

"And without further ado," the King raised his glass to his crowd of subjects before him. "To Princess Azula, on her sixteenth birthday. May she grow to be as powerful as she is beautiful."

"Princess Azula!" The collective guests raised their glasses in unison with the Pharaoh's and the svelte young beauty standing high on the dais in a sinfully red gown made of the finest silk that when she moved it reflected in the candlelight like pools of blood. The dress had no swooping or tempting plummet of necklines for it had a form of halter of gold embroidered dark burgundy silk that wrapped around her slim, long neck like a choker and let the back of the dress fall to the middle of her back, showing that in the daring new style, she need not wear chest bindings.

She wore no make-up; her lips were naturally pink and her lashes naturally dark and her hair flowed free, long and beautiful over her slender shoulders.

"You're sister is lovely." Katara commented, languidly clapping like a true aristocrat while keeping her veiled eyes fixed on the stage where two out of the four of the royal family were standing. The Prince has making his way back to her with a disconsolate expression, accepting the red domino mask she'd been holding for him, and fixing it over his scar to make sure it stayed completely covered. "Are you hiding you're face to the crowd because you don't wish to be bothered or because your fiancée is looking for you?" She inquired.

"Neither," he snapped.

"I think you are lying, Prince."

"Oh, you slay me with your wit. Is that how you play to win my father?"

Katara glared but it was useless. Adjoining the illusion of a Western marriage gown, the dress came with a veil that rested over the feathered half-mask; it was made of thin itchy material that vaguely resembled fishing nets and was long enough to twist back with her thickly curled hair and nearly swept the floor.

As an ending result—she stood out blindly among the reds and browns and yellows.

Then again, that's what the Prince wanted.

"What are you even doing?" she hissed suddenly very annoyed and tempted to forget about the party altogether.

"None of your business, peasant, just get to work and leave me alone."

She did not flinch but glared at him as he slunk through the crowd, blending easily with people who after a few drinks wouldn't be wiser to the fact that they were rubbing elbows with royalty.

Brushing thoughts of him off, Katara stayed at her post near the door, watching as the real party began; music, dancing, and the drunken laughter that filled the room like smoke from flames. The noise was wretched on her ears, but she managed. She always did.

Like at her first party she couldn't help but be disgusted by these people; their petty lives and worries and troubles amounted to nothing up against what she had endured during the last few unfortunate years of her life. She wanted to slit each and every one of their throats in their sleep with an ice dagger she'd been practicing with.

Cool heat, fragile as a newborn infant but tougher than bone.

A perfect, self-manageable weapon.

Why should these people—these horrible, terrible people—deserve to live rich, worry free lives while she herself and her people could not.

What made them superior when all they could do was destroy?

She caught the familiar sound of music and glanced up at the stage only to realize who had taken it.

Now she knew why she had to wear two masks: the Midnight Dancers were here.

From halfway across the great hall she could not make-out whom they were but the telltale willowy pale limbs and the tight spins gave her an idea; Ty Lee and Suki preforming the same dance they had at the banquet nearly a month ago. There was another girl up there with them, the one standing in her place and dancing her steps, younger and her skin held the same parlor of the Lands of Fire.

She might actually have the same history the Prince thought her to have; sold into the House by her poor parents who were unable to find a suitable husband for her.

She watched them for a few more minutes, watching the girl make a few mistakes with her footing and Ty Lee glared at her.

Their performance was alright, weak at best, but not something that would make Ming proud particularly. Ty Lee and Suki never missed a step and it was their flawless appearances and dance steps that made up for the new girl's clumsiness. Part of her wanted to smile with pride while the other part wanted them to look wrecked, miss a step, have Suki's mask slip or Ty Lee's braid to unravel. They were just fine without her. Existing on like she had not been the one to comfort them in their times of need and teach them those dance steps; it looked as if she had never existed on that stage. She wasn't there, not ever, they had never seen her before a day in their lives.

It made her feel lonely.

Suddenly, her vision of the stage was obscured by the image of an elaborate red satin mask with gold patches sewn stylishly into it, gold rimming around the eyes and two rounded ears at the peak of its forehead.

A lioness.

By the dress, divulging smirk of the pink mouth; she knew it was the princess was standing before her.

"Who are you supposed to be?" Katara asked aloud before she could stop herself.

The pink mouth tilted upward into an unkind smile. "Sekhmet." She replied with a perfect accent, forceful and lax all at the same time in her cool self-assurance and the obvious bravery that came from wearing the totemic form of a Goddess of Vengeance.

"Lovely," Katara replied but it comes out twisted through her teeth as if she were trying to shred the word for how little she meant it.

The princess's smirk did not waver and her melting pot gold eyes intensified from behind the eyeholes of her lioness half-mask.

"And you?"

She nearly had to stop herself from snorting at the radicalness of her situation.

"The God La, from the northern Lands of Water."

"I see," the princess relied silkily, eyes donning the gauzy white dress Katara wore that starkly contrasted against her terra colored skin. Their eyes locked through their masks and Katara knew she was trying to make out the vivid blue of her eyes from behind the white veil that masked them. "To the credit of your heritage then?"

"It seemed fairly obvious." She forced out.

"Quite, excuse me." And just like that Princess Azula brushed past her to some other richly dressed young lord.

_Scary girl._

* * *

Hours grew longer and Katara remained in the thicket of the crowd, watching the dancers and listening to the idle chatter of the Queen and how she had yet to make an appearance at her own daughter's party. And then how the weather should be getting colder soon—apparently, the upper crust of Egyptian society hardly appreciated the cold winds blown in from the northern lands, they, thought it was an eternal curse the tribes there had placed on them long ago. She smirked at this.

"Ah, I finally found you." A smooth, thick whisper caught her attention and all of a sudden she was drawn up to the Pharaoh and lifted into the air. She gave a shriek and restrained the urge to claw at him like she wanted to.

The rest of the drunken guests laughed at the display.

"Y—Your Highness!" she shrieked and it pulled into a tight embrace against the drunken king's chest. His body was warm and radiating intense heat that seeped through his fine clothes. She shoved away from him as gently as she possibly could and tilted her head up to voice her dislike of being embraced so openly—again, _gently—_when the King's he swooped towards hers and his lips planted firmly upon hers.

Katara's eyes grew wider than dinner plates.

The King finally pulled away with a moan of delight and cradled her close as if she had enjoyed the taste of liquor on her mouth.

"Shhh, my little desert flower," he whispered through his own half-mask. "I cannot have anyone knowing it's me."

_Like that's going to work. _She was now happy of her mask; he couldn't see her skeptical look.

"Here, surrounded by these common people, wearing masks, we can be who we truly are lovers." The word rolled off his tongue like thick honey and the sweetness made her sick. He set his forehead against hers. "I can have you without anyone knowing."

That sounded like a threat.

She went still in his arms.

"I was wondering, would you mind dancing to entertain my guests? It should me much more riveting than this."

He gestured to _this _being Suki and Ty Lee swirling across the stage in masks and garnet scarves.

"I'm not sure I should—"

"Oh, but you must."

"No, really—."

"Nonsense," He snapped his fingers and the music cut immediately.

Suki, Ty Lee and the other girl tittered on one foot and stumbled into normal stances—like the music controlled their very way of dance.

The Pharaoh gestured to her and climbed high onto the dais the first step lower and Katara stepped onto the stage, fingers curled into tight fists that ruined the delicate beauty of her soft satin elbow-length gloves. She did not care though, if she was being forced to dance for these people, she would do as she pleased.

"And now for my daughter, a little dance from a very special friend of mine," The Pharaoh announced and whispers tumbled over the crowd. A man in a green suit stepped up to the King and helped him down, whispering to him Ozai laughed drunkly at something he thought was funny.

The whole sight was revolting.

A King losing his senses to spirits.

Kissing her publicly even though he was married.

Katara's breath caught in her throat and she gridded her teeth. She ripped the gloves off.

Angry, she leant forward, griping tightly at the underlying material of her dress under the flasher of the skirts, she ripped it; all the way around, allowing her legs freer moment. Gasps echoed through the crowd and a few smiles ignited on the faces of few men, she drank it all in greedily and shot back her own soft sweet smile and tossed the torn material to her former dance mates.

Suki and Ty Lee were none the wiser still.

She could feel a flare through the crowd: the Prince's rage, the noble's question, the Pharaoh's intrigue.

Gripping another fistful of skirt at her thigh, making the crowd gasp more for a dramatic bravado, then she turned; swinging the skirt around with her and tossed it back behind her.

Katara stretched her hands up and her fingers rested are the tie of her veil, idly wondering if she should tear that away to, her mind stressed the thought until the music began; a slow sultry beat.

Oh, she had an idea.

She began to sway her hips, every twitch sending the white skirt flicking upward, showing the taboo bare, tan skin of her ankles. As the beat went, she swayed, dramatic, slow, fast. On a long held note she lowered her arms down to her abdomen, and then unfurled them upward like wings ready for flight.

She began to roll her shoulders with her sways, tossing her hair and veil and feeling the music as it moved.

On a last defiant note her arms moved upward again, then back down. She spun in the same instant, turning to face the entranced crowd.

Drums beat and she rolled her body—though it would be more impressive with a belly bearing dress—moving her arms and curling her wrists in perfect sync to the music and taking a few steps to grace a new dance routine was born with every tambourine shake or drum beat.

She lost herself in the music, really feeling it now.

She rolled and curled and twists and swayed and every move was perfectly sensual and mystic in grace that she was sure she looked like some Egyptian goddess.

Katara did not know the music ended until the applause overrode the imaginary beat in her head and she froze her position—wrists locked above her head—and then lowered them to her sides and smiled politely at the crowd before sparing a glance towards her former dance mates to meet their sour expressions and easy hatred from behind the delicate silk.

_Good. _They should hate her.

Even if they didn't know it was really her.

She nodded in acknowledgement and opened her arms while taking a quick step back—relinquishing the stage to them—and fleeing from the Pharaoh's sight.

* * *

It was some time later—once the Pharaoh had restructured with his drinking partner and admitted to being himself to a group of masked men—that someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned expecting anyone: the Prince, the Princess, Suki, Ty Lee, but defiantly not some aristocrat boy wanting a dance.

She had to stare at him a moment after realizing what he'd asked.

His arm was outstretched in offering and his eyes teased her for her hesitance, his smirk was unapparent.

"May I have this dance, my lady?" He asked and his voice is rough with a distinctive Western accent.

A diplomat? No, too young.

The son of a diplomat. Perhaps.

"You think it wise, my lord?" Katara quipped and he smiled.

"I'll take my chances with these pockets if you will."

She smirked a little at the street vernacular she was so use to and didn't think twice on why a diplomat's son would know it before taking his hand and letting him lead her into a dance. _As long as he isn't Fire Nation, _her mind was eased at the thought.

"So, you're the infamous Lady Katara?" he questioned.

"That would be me."

"You are . . ." His expression behind the mask twisted slightly as if he were blushing. "A _magnificent_ dancer."

She was use to such a comment, but thanked him anyway. "Thank you, I learned from my step-mother."

He spun her suddenly and led her back to him, they stepped left then right and lifted her expertly in the air, calculating with her weight and his strength, and Katara's hands released his arms on impulse and used her weight to turn as he pulled her into a dip, his hand placed firmly at her back.

Just as the male dancers had taught her in the House.

"What an absolute coincidence, so did I." He smirked from behind his green silver lined mask. His eyes were dark like the burnt metal of copper.

Not gold, not blue, not green. Different.

His skin was brown from the sun and his hair a few shades darker. He was dressed wealthily in a green suit to match his mask and he wore black leather gloves.

"That _is _interesting." She smirked as he pulled her back to her feet and continues the fast paced dance. "Now what is your name?"

He smiled at this. "Oh, that I cannot tell you, darlin'."

"Oh and why not?" She teased back and she caught herself in the moment.

Flirting? Now?

What he said next sobered her.

"Because I am a spy."

"W—what?" She tried to pull away but it was in vain for he was stronger and held her in an iron grip that made her feel as though she were meeting steel resistance. He could be a bender.

Then another thought: _why would he tell her?_

"Oh, because you won't tell you see," his voice grew rougher, no more of his rich diplomat accent, and he twirled her once more before pulling them together to make the act look natural; his hand clasping onto her so he could lean into her to whisper in her ear with his hurried voice. "Because I know what you're doing."

Her breathing hitched.

Her mouth suddenly went dry and she couldn't find the words to speak, retort, or feign anger.

Somehow, she knew, that's where he wanted her.

"But I won't stop you; I'll just beat you to it." He whispered coarsely. "Though you may think you deserve it more, you and a thousand others, I will only allow the satisfaction of the Pharaoh's death to be had by me. And me only. Do you understand?"

Katara's eyes widened from behind and the man stepped away from her.

"Why?" she whispered and looking back on it she knows that he shouldn't have been able to hear her anyway, but he did and he answered.

"Because I'm selfish."

Bowing, he disappeared into the crowd with practiced ease.

Suddenly, there was a loud gasp echoing through the dance hall and then a scream.

Katara whirled around in time to see the Pharaoh fall.

The golden chalice in his hand rolling across the floor and spilling poison green liquid.

* * *

Healers had been called and someone had sent out guards—all of them—to find the green suited man that made his escape moments before. He was long gone—that Katara knew. People were being ushered out of the dance hall and caught in the rush of the crowd, Katara didn't know where she was going.

Left, right, Pharaoh's court stayed behind, Queen's ladies scurrying away, diplomats calling their bodyguards, then a wall—.

"Ow."

The Prince had her pinned against it, pulling her back into the shadowy confines between the two tightly placed pillars. She stood, smashed against his chest for a few moments while he strained his neck to check the guards passing through the halls. His hand fell over her mouth to muffle her protest.

They waited there a long time. Until every last person was gone from the hall, the Prince removed his hand and Katara tried to step away, only to meet the wall again.

"What did you do?!" Zuko roared she could practically feel the rage burning off of him.

Katara shook her head. "It was someone else! The man in green!"

The Prince glared at her then turned, hauling her down the corridor.

"Where are we going?"

"Shut up."

* * *

The Prince continued to tug her down the corridor and into his mother's royal chambers.

Katara had been left to put the pieces together that he had heard of his mother's absents as well and worried by the news, decided to visit her, but due to the events of tonight was not willing to let her be anywhere alone even if it was her stone prison, so he'd brought her alone without thinking twice of it.

His logic was astounding.

"Where are the guards?" he murmured and rapped at the grand eight foot tall door curtly, like it would make a difference, then called to the woman within before just entering on his own.

* * *

**RE- I fixed this because it was too rushed and too blah and I hated it and I was distracted by my adorable three year old cousin Alyssa. And I had my first day of work and all a small fraction of my family (eighteen out of thirty people) were staying at my house for Thanksgiving. Craziness, I tell you. But I wouldn't have it any other way honestly.**

**Notes:**

***I don't think Jet made as much of an enterance as he should, but the sneaky bastard was under Zuko and Katara's radar so ha! I characterize _purr-fect-ly_!**

***Pocket: slang for a rich person**

***Sekhmet: Warrior Goddess responsible for: war, fire, heat, vengeance, enchantments, mummification, hunting, wild animals, and courage. Her totemic form is a lioness. Perfect for Azula.**

**Random News: La de da, kill-in' some-one Black Fri-day in da cit-ta, cray-zay crap . . .. . hey the rest of my relatives are here!**

* * *

**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **Katara and Zuko unlock the secret as to why Ursa hasn't made an appearance yet! A beloved dead character becomes a creeper! The Hidden Princess and the Arrogant Prince-_le gasp-_BOND!

* * *

**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	18. Chapter 18

**Re-wrote the last chapter just a bit.**

* * *

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Eighteen: Touch of Death**_

* * *

"Mother?" he called into the shadowy foyer. There were no guards posted inside either, all of them had bleached from the 'unnecessary' posts to protect the king or find this "Man in Green" the dancer had been yammering about. At the moment, he had been too worried for his mother to think of locking the girl up for even speaking to that man. No, he'd simply dragged her along with him.

He was beginning to regret that once his wits had come back to him.

"Stay here," he said firmly and stabbed a finger at the ground as if to indicate where he wanted her to wait.

The dancer arched a delicate brow from behind her translucent mask, but he ignored her indecorous behavior—for_ now_—and stepped past the archway further into Ursa's rooms.

As a queen, and a successful one, her chambers had all the luxury one would need as a the second highest (one-step below the King) member in Egyptian society; her room was actually six rooms total: the foyer, the main sitting room, her dining room, a miniature study area, her adjoined private washroom and then her grand bedroom. All the rooms were lavishly decorated with the finest silks and elaborate wood carvings. Books and scrolls gathered from the royal libraries litter the grand polished table, taken during a conquest of the Western lands perhaps; Zuko remembered her taking up tutoring him herself for a while since she was quite knowledgeable, even for a woman.

He frowned at the memory of his father raging on and on about how a woman, even the Queen, cannot possibly teach an heir to the Lands of Fire everything he must need to know. After his 'accident' his father hadn't cared much for his tutorage, and Zuko had allowed his mother to take up teaching him again because it made her happy.

But seeing her son's scarred face for the first time after the gauze were removed had taken a terrible toll on her. Ursa blamed herself, and Ozai made no secret for it to be known that _he _blamed _her. _

As if she'd burned him herself.

She very well may have from the scorn she had gotten that had slid off Ozai like oil.

Zuko coughed, and swatted at the air in front of his face.

Incents were burning in their elusive spun from glass bowls. The Prince never liked incents, for all the calming and training that required them, and the fact that he was a Firebender, he never quite held the same fondness the court held for them.

Agni, it smelled terrible.

The Prince turned to two tall, carved from wood doors with a pillar on either side.

He opened them without much thought and a gust of wind blew through him.

Ursa's chambers were cold, the elaborate gold marble shining imperiously in the full moonlight obscured by her tossing scarlet curtains that danced in the night breeze like waves over the ocean. Her large circular bed, piled high with pillows, laid dead centre of the room and Ursa in it: looking as pale as a seedling fire lily surrounded by what looked to be a river blood.

_Just a trick of the light, _he assured himself, nearly panicking over the red silk blankets wrapping haphazardly around the Queen.

The cool air gushed onto the exposed skin of his neck again and he turned, fighting past the curtains and wrapping his fingers around the curved golden handles of the door leading out to Ursa's balcony view of the courtyard, and locked them tightly against the cool night air.

He turned his head again to his mother lying motionless on her bed.

He stepped closer, the room was darker now, but her fair skin stood out starkly against the ravenous mane of hair splayed across her silk pillows.

An odd smell was coming off her too.

_She must have dyed her hair again. _Zuko reached out to touch a lock of hair, the check for a change of texture, but his fingers brushed instead against her cheek; he nearly lurched back with a gasp.

The queen was as cold as death.

Her eyes opened and slowly rolled open to look at his face, the murky golden depths reflect no emotion.

"Z-z-z-zuko?" He nearly fainted hearing her voice and he sought her hand and held her icy flesh to his.

"Mother!"

"Zu-ko, i-i-it is so," her bone white lips formed the word but she couldn't seem to get it out, like the icy air had climbed down her lungs to strangle her.

"I know, mother, I know."

His mother continued to shake like a leaf regardless.

At the sound of footfalls he glanced up.

The dancer girl was standing in the archway, clutching at the gold inlays like they were a lifeline and, having disowned her masks, her eyes were wide and watching the queen like a spectator would watch a rider fall from his ostrich-horse.

Being one of quick wit and feeling the urgency of the situation, the Prince called to her.

"Fetch some blankets!"

He began to pull the silk duvet over his mother's trembling body but a snort caught his attention.

"That won't work." He glared at the girl and was nearly ready to set her aflame. What should he do then? Sit by and wait for his mother, his queen, his only decent family, to die?! His jaw flecked and the dancer noted this and gave him a look.

A look that told him that he was beneath her.

A look the screamed for him to listen to her.

A look that could surely cripple a man much lesser than he.

Like the first time he'd met her she held an air of nobility around her that was nearly impossible to ignore. Perhaps if she ever felt the need to tell him her life story (dubitably) then he may be able to piece together where her attitude came from. If he let her live that long, that is.

"Do as I say!" he barked again, but still she did not move. Her hands balled into fists at her sides and her eyes locked with his.

"I know what's wrong with her." She pressed eyes hardening like pools of ice. "It was common where I grew up, but perhaps less so here," she paused to look at him, measuring if she had his attention or not. She did. "It's a cold sickness that enters the body—"

"We have that here too," Zuko grinds out and glared at her. "It's rare and it's deadly, and so help me Agni, if you do not fetch more blankets I will—"

The dancer crossed the space between them and grabbed the collar of his costume, jarring him to a halt.

"And where _I _come from its _common, _so if you wish to save your mother, _you'll _do as _I _say."

Zuko stared into her melted azure eyes and anger flushed face, to the hand on his shirt collar—which was shaking, almost like she couldn't believe she was barking orders at him. Then his gaze fell to his trembling mother, clutching at the blankets around her and moaning in her half-sleep stupor.

The people of the Watertribes were known for their healing powers and medicines—however, they were far declined when it came to _his _people's privileged learning—the archaic disease may have some cure deep within her foreign knowledge.

"You have no healing powers."

"I need none." She countered.

"Then, what do I need to do?"

Neither of them could believe the words out of his mouth, but the dancer is quick to compose herself, fingers unlocking from his collar and tugs at the draw strings of his chest plate.

"Take off your shirt."

At that, even he begins to have his doubts.

"Excuse me?"

"Just do it!"

* * *

As it turned out the most efficient way to remedy the cold sickness was skin-to-skin contact.

He sat his mother up against his bare chest to her mostly bare back and took the seat behind her, pulling her blankets up around her and then enclosed her in his arms.

It all seemed to make more sense whence he got to putting the pieces together.

His mother was not a Firebender, therefore, she didn't have that crucial life-saving chi that naturally warmed all Firebenders. She was but a mere human left to face the cold alone. That was why, more civilians than benders died on the rarity of cold perilous nights of their native homeland.

And to think the people of the Lands of Water and Ice, in all their primitive and outdated technology, knew this the entire time.

The woman glared at him from the hearth she knelt by, stroking the flames to warm the entire room.

"It's not a big discovery," she grumbled. "it's common sense, it's knowledge we're born with. My brother and I—" she cut herself off there and Zuko's eyes narrow.

She always did that. Cutting herself off, not sharing too much, ignoring valuable questions.

He wanted to comment on it, but his jaw locked and he watched her work the hearth for a few more minutes.

In the back of his mind, he knows that he should probably, maybe, perhaps, thank her, but his pride simply won't allow it.

He concentrated, working to warm his body, but to not spark fire.

* * *

After a few more minutes, his mother has stopped shivering before the room is warm and the Waterbender is leaning over his mother to press her terra-colored palm to his mother's ivory skin and he is half-tempted to slap her hand away.

She nodded to herself and looked at him. "She should be well enough now, the fire will warm her and your chi has done enough. You wouldn't want her overheating." She added the last bit snappily before he could argue and he slipped out from behind his mother to arrange her back onto the bed of pillows and a few added blankets.

The color is returning to her face, cheeks rosy with blood and her skin is warm like her own fires raged beneath her skin.

He almost smiled. Almost.

"I wonder," the dancer muttered. "Who could have opened the door?"

He stood straight, shoulder back and face grim, his eyes meeting the oceanic blues of the dancer's.

"Not a friend, nor was it an accident," he said. "No one, not even the innocent are without enemies here." He reached down into the pile of clothes he'd left on the floor and found a simple red cotton undershirt to pull on.

"Who do you think did it?" she asked again and he pulled the shirt over his head.

"It's no concern of yours; I will lead an investigation on it myself." He is about to stride past her, but then thought of his mother; on the brink of death from the cold sickness and now alive and well.

She would have thanked her.

"And thank you," he said quickly, hoping she may not even hear it. "For your help."

* * *

When guards had finally arrived they weren't for what he demanded. The idiotic, faceless, _wastes of space _were here to tell him that he had to stay in his—the queen's—rooms and wouldn't be allowed to leave, less he wished to be burned to a fine crisp by the mercenaries.

He'd make a note to remember why he had the secret passage leading to and out of his mother's room bricked up.

On right: he thought it would be beneficial.

He was now locked in his mother's room with this _woman. _

"Stop glaring at me like this is my fault." The girl grumbled.

He continued to glare. "It is your fault. If you hadn't been associating yourself with the _enemy_ then maybe we wouldn't be in this predicament."

"Calm down, tough guy, it's not _all_ my fault." Her lips curl upward into a smile. "_But _you did admit that you needed me a few minutes ago."

Damn, she had heard.

"The guards will trip over their own pointy shoes to protect Ozai but won't bat an eye when the queen is in obvious need of protection."

"Maybe they're just complementing you; the Queen needs no other protection while you're around."

He glared.

"Relax it was a joke."

He threw himself back into a plush chair. "I am in no mood for jokes."

If the guard intended for everyone to stay locked in their rooms that meant they were still after the vigilante. That could either be a good or bad thing, depending on if this 'man in green' was content with _just _the Pharaoh.

The vigilante could have Azula for all he cared—she had reigned terror for sixteen years, hopefully such evil wouldn't last much longer—all joking aside.

"Just trying to lighten the mood."

"Well don't." he snapped back.

The woman rolled her eyes and fell into a couch adjacent from the one he was sitting on. It was becoming apparent that she didn't take his temper seriously anymore.

"Perhaps," the dancer's voice broke the stark silence. "He'll die in the night."

That gave him hope, but he knew better.

"No, no he'll always survive this." He ducked his head into his hands, fingers tightening in his hair. "He always does."

* * *

With the morning came a messenger that revealed that the King was, in fact, still breathing.

* * *

**Normally, I try to look at stories from both sides, but honestly I'm finding it hard with the elementary school shooting that happened a few days ago. I start thinking of my little sister and my cousins and well, I start thinking too much. If any of you knew them, or live in the area I'm sorry anyone of you had to deal with that. **

**There had been two more shootings around here, and some mob activity (as I am told) so we're all looking at a glum Christmas if no one can get in the spirit.**

**For most this is a place to get away from problems, then may my childhood playground carry you away somewhere different or better. No one should have to deal with any of the bad things in the world, but it builds who we are, I am who I am because of everything that has happened to me but I wouldn't change anything for everything I've learned. You're not alone in this, or anything, if anyone has ever hurt you or if you've hurt them things can get better.**

**Merry Christmas :) if I don't see you.**

**Random Sh!t:**

***Black Friday was crazy. I pretended to be narco-sleeping disease to get movies and some stranger tracked me down to give me back my phone. Guess who else was there? Hot jerk XD Hilarious and productive perusual. **

***My grandma and I read all of my grandpa's old war letters and looked at pictures of him. It was her first Thanksgiving in fifty years without him. He was very much missed and we all paid tribute to the man who made us the crazy bunch of half-Irish wild childs we are today. I love you Grandpa Bill.**

* * *

**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **With Ozai down for the count (but not entirely out of the game) Katara somehow finds herself spending quality time with some of the 'better' halves of the royal family.

* * *

**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	19. Chapter 19

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Nineteen: Flaking Away**_

* * *

Katara's eyebrows knitted in scrutiny as her eyes racked across the parchment paper that had been given to her, via messenger boy, and chewed her lips together.

"Continue . . ." the Prince urged seeming to hang on every word that slipped past her lips. Katara pinned him with a glare that he matched with his own.

"This is ridicules."

"_Continue._"

She snorted and fanned the letter near a burning torch as if she might light it on fire, but, then again, she knew better than to do so.

"'My dearest Katara'," she reread with a new sense of vigor. "'Since that vigilante's iniquitous attempt on my life, I find myself plagued with thoughts of complete and utter darkness. In a land where turmoil reigns free to pillage my kingdom of its graces blessed from the Gods'—or off the backs of other nations—"She added slyly and continued to recite the Pharaoh's letter. "'But in those dreams, I find that there are beacons of light that shine down on me; bright glassy blue, like your eyes. It was as if you were my savior, my beauty, like female deity the Greeks identify as _Aph-ro-dite. _I want to worship you as they do her, I want to—"

Katara stopped, her eyes dropping as the letter continued and her jaw, very slowly, dropped.

"Con—"

"I'm not reading that!" Tearing the paper to shreds with her nails, Katara tossed it into the fire with the five others slowly diminishing into ash and the Prince nodded.

"Was he describing again?"

Katara sprawled herself out over the throne pillows of the queen's sitting room and turned away, refusing to answer.

"You know you'll have to write back . . ."

"Not in that manner."

"Of course not."

"Good."

They were still locked in the queen's rooms, even after the Pharaoh was confirmed alive—_alive!_ _That ruddy old cockroach just wouldn't die!—_the Man in Green was still making a run for his life and Katara was praying to Tui and La and even Agni that the man got out alive to make a return on his attempts.

Least she be further tortured by the Pharaoh's oncoming proclamations of love. The first day it had been letters, steadily increasing in number and 'creativity' as they came, each time he reported that he was 'begging' his physician to let her come to see him, but the old man retorted that he was not yet 'physically able'—she had felt the stinging need to wretch soon afterward. The second day the letters arrived with gifts from the royal treasury: ruby and gold chains and pretty things to arrange in her hair and a choker with a large ruby pendent hanging from it.

The latter had been a mocking gift, as he was, jokingly, proposing to her.

The third day he'd caught wind that his gifts were being sent to the queen's chambers where she resided on his wife's sickbed. She had been forced to reply then and made up a lengthy explanation that a maid had shoved her into the room along with some nurses and she'd been tending to the queen's frail health since Princess Azula's birthday party.

He had—somewhat believe it—and said she would be able to visit him soon.

* * *

"Have you been training?"

"Yes, a little, ice is still a tad . . ."

"It's alright," the calmness in his voice surprised her. "You won't be killing him today. He'll have guards and physicians around him at all times, not an exactly idealism assassination setting."

She nodded, almost wanting to laugh.

"That is a relief."

"Scared?" It sounded like a taunt and Katara met the Prince's eyes without meaning too. The bright, melted gold shined with the light laughter.

"A little."

"How so?"

"All men scare me, your highness." She feigned a smile and slipped into the private room to dress into the most modest, silk dress she could find.

* * *

Of course, she had to wear his gifts too. The Prince had watched her, sitting at his mother's vanity mirror as she fixed her hair and arranged the chain around her head like a diadem with tendrils of ruby studded jewels weaving through her curls. Next was her make-up, and she was determined to keep it simple after as the pale, glittering powder she had been forced to dust her face and body with at the party. She outlined the lower lid of her eyes with kohl with a very steady, talented hand and then set to paint her lips a lively, bloody rouge like a blooming flower.

She caught the Prince's stare a few times in the mirror and finally asked him if anything was wrong. His expression was puzzled for a few more moments before he shook his head and continued to watch her prepare.

"I never understood how women could do that."

"What?"

"Drawing on their eyes."

"It's easy," she threw a grin at him in the mirror. "Some men do it too, in this country."

"Not in your life."

She chuckled before staring into the mirror once more, smoothing over her dress and checking her belt of jewels that wrapped around her midsection just under her bust. It was a deep shadow of red, a delicious shade that reminded her of dark red wine with a heavy taste.

"Finished?"

She nodded, fusing with her hair once more before rising from the chair.

* * *

The King's rooms were much larger than the queen's on a grand scale of both luxury and size. The ceilings seemed to rise as high as those in the dance hall and the wooden pillars that crossed it were dotted with torches that could only be lite by either a tall ladder or target practice. Rugs and tapestries of bright, vivid—mostly red—colors decorated the floors and walls, with some merging of actually western paintings—most of the Pharaoh when he was young. The doors were grander as well, with inlays of gold and jewels one would think something of value laid behind them.

Sadly, it was just the King's sleeping chamber.

Ozai was lying in bed—curtains drawn away from him—and by the waist down he was covered in a sheer looking, silk coverlet that had gold tassels on the trim. He wore a shirt similar to a merchant's, but of much finer quality, and his hair was drawn up into a topknot crowned by his jewel of power. He was surrounded by chattering men in robes that flaunted their status, but once she entered the room, all the chatter seemed to drain as all eyes turned to her.

The maid seemed at a loss on what to do, so Katara stepped forward to curtsey. "Forgive me, my lord, I could come back later . . .?"

A smirk tugged at the King's features and he held up a hand. "Nonsense, Mistress Katara," then he made a beckoning motion. "Come. Sit beside me."

She froze for a fraction of a second, eyes going wide and her mind protesting when she took that first fatal step forward and wormed her way around the advisors and aristocrats before plotting down at the edge of the bed. The Pharaoh laughed.

"No, Katara," the familiar way he said her name made her shiver with disgust. "_Beside _me."

And she did.

Her back up against his pillows and her legs curled half-under her, she endured the aristocrat's stares as Ozai continued holding court and being diplomatic and charming and _acting like no one could see his hand on her backside._

* * *

His hands kept moving.

Drawing circles into her back and along the length of her spine, occasionally resting on her breast bindings and then moving down again.

Sometimes his fingers tangled with her hair, others they played with a jewel.

He would whisper tricky things into her ear—comments on his advisors, his plans, his strength, himself, _them_—and she would have to giggle at whatever it was that he said.

"Become acquainted with this room, my broken mistress," he whispered coolly before she could leave. "I plan to keep you locked up in here for nights and nights."

And then he kissed her.

* * *

She returned to the queen's chamber to find the Prince was gone and Ursa asleep.

Immediately, she went to the washroom with the intent of washing the length of her arms and face, to rid herself of Ozai's _smell _when she caught sight of herself in the looking glass.

The mirror image staring back at her was Ekatarian: flushed and worried and shaken in a way that was so startling shocking it felt like a memory from an old life.

—_Let it die. Let it die. Let it END! When will it end?! When will it STOP!?—_

She began ripping the jewels out of her hair, not caring as the chains tangled with her locks and ripped the hair from her scalp. It was just hair, it would grow back. Just _lovely ringlets the Pharaoh just **loved **to worry his fingers through._

She wanted to cut all her hair off and leave nothing left for him to adore.

—_her diadem tangled with her curls and ripped at her scalp when he tore it off and she was nothing. No title, no honor, no dignity left. Just a crown, just some blood, just some pride—_

Reminded of his kiss, sour and cold on her lips, Katara snagged a towel from a shelf and began scrubbing at her face furiously; smearing red and black and powder and doing much more damage than help, her skin was burning a raw red by the time she was finished.

Ekatarian was still in the mirror; staring back with watery blue, blue eyes and her red, red mouth was like a bloodstain it had once been, her hair in entangled and chucks of it laying on the floor wrapped around petty jewels and her eyes stinging red with tears.

Katara realized she looked as much as Ekatarian did the day she died.

A rare swelling began to rise in her throat and the stinging in her eyes grew more intense.

—_the spilling of blood continued and the man leant forward to bite her lips. She screamed beneath his teeth, louder and louder until the delicate skin broke and a hand clasped over her mouth. Blood and tears smearing across her face and he was just laughing and groaning and leaning back and relishing the feel of her—_

Katara gasped and reeled away from the mirror and stumbled to the ground, curling into herself.

She couldn't . . . she couldn't forget.

It was all so real and fresh in her mind like it was happening _now_.

—_pain, pain, pain. Why do they hurt her? Why do they do this night after night?—_

She could feel their teeth and hands and skin all over her, like itches she could scratch.

Taint on her skin she could rub away.

She felt dirty.

And she cried.

For the first time in years, tears rolled down her face in a great rush and swarmed to keep falling like they had all been waiting for this panicle moment of weakness when she couldn't hold back the walls that held them.

—_she cried for nights, days, weeks. She couldn't stop the tears. Every night when they returned, a fresh salt of tears were ready to fall the moment one of them touched her—_

She thought herself above crying since then.

Katara didn't cry. Katara wasn't hurt. Katara wasn't _raped._

Ekatarian was.

Everything happened to _her_.

But _she_ was _dead_ now.

All they shared was the same vile face and tainted body.

Katara stiffened when she felt arms wrap around her, long and slender like a dove's wings with a sort of cool heat she was not use to.

The arms pulled her into a pillowed chest and held her close like her mother once had.

She wanted to get away, to shove, to push, to run, but a gentle feminine hand rested on her cheek and with her thumb smoothed away the tears. "Shhh, hush little one, hush."

The hand was wrong—long and pale, while her own mother's hands were small and tan—but the same feeling of comfort was there; a motherly tenderness. It had been a long time since she felt that.

Without much else to do, Katara cried into the queen's lap.

* * *

When her eyes dried of tears the queen handed her a robe and told her to go into a separate room when her servants arrived to fill the bath. She followed the command dutifully, not fully registering what she had said, and sat in the sitting room until the bath was filled and the queen lead her back into the washroom and helped her step in.

She sat beside the tub with her, humming softly in almost a lullaby while she took a towel not stained by her make-up and began to gently scrub at her tender skin, touching her as less as possible, but tilting her chin up so she could look in her eyes while she removed the smudged kohl.

"Such a pretty girl . . ." she breathed.

* * *

Katara felt silly once her wits came back to her, curled up on the queen's bed, completely bare aside from her robes she had borrowed from her, she wondered how she left herself fall to such an unruly state.

She needed to get a grip.

Now was not the time to lose her head.

But no matter how she tried to numb herself to it; she still felt wrong.

The queen had scrubbed the blood from her scalp and the make-up from her face, but still the itchy feeling of uncleanliness stuck to her skin like damp gossamer.

The queen took to singing a while ago, southern Egypt folksongs probably since she couldn't recognize them, and all together she looked quite well after her few days of rest. The color in her cheeks, the strength in her steps. Katara almost smiled.

_I'm at least happy I got to save you, as you saved me. _Katara thought, looking at the queen standing in front of her balcony window, letting the cooling breeze of the evening air hit her face and splash a golden hue from the sunset across her alabaster skin.

"Let me, your majesty," she offered and helped the queen to her vanity table that she had used only this morning.

"I would like my hair up, it's been down far too long, and it's rather a bother."

Katara knew three ways of braiding hair: her Watertribe braid with loops, a series of braids that wavered over the shoulder into a 'fish tail', and a Western braid favored for its efficiency to the working woman. It went atop of her head and crossed over her ear back to where it started.

The queen surprised her by choosing the latter for her hair to be fashioned into.

They sat mainly in silence, Katara brushing the queen's rough yet smooth hair and pinning it into place on her head like a crown. It showed off the delicate bones of her neck and the slenderness of her shoulders beneath the heavy robe she wore.

"It's getting very cold out. One might catch the cold sickness early this year." The queen remarked solemnly and Katara nodded. "You are not one for talking are you?"

"Not usually." She whispered and thanked the gods that her voice did not betray her.

The queen's eyes softened some.

"You're that foreign girl, the one who came with my son."

Katara began to pin the queen's hair. "Yes, your majesty."

Ursa's brows drew together slightly, then smoothed as if she were afraid to wrinkle them. "And the King, he pursues you?"

Katara put the last pin in Ursa's hair before taking three large steps back as the queen turned to face her. "It wasn't my purpose to draw attention to myself."

"Of course, it never is." Ursa rose from her chair as if she were rising from water, and stepped over to a glass bowl of incents and striking a match to light it.

Putrid smelling smoke filled the air.

"A man like Ozai always wants what he can't have, and doesn't deserve, but that just makes him want it even more and he won't stop until he gets it."

The queen lifted the bowl and took a large whiff of the curling smoke before gently coughing into her palm.

* * *

**Whatever is the matter with Queen Ursa? I know, and I'm going to hell for it.**

**Sorry about that three week long wait and such and such, after I don't update for awhile I feel like no one will ever be interested in my story, people hate me, I make too many mistakes and I suck. Really, I've just been low on the confedence meter lately (your lovely reviews aside) and my cheerful mask is cracking so I'm a tad depressed and tired and just emotionally drained and void of all things happy. **

**But if I get ten reviews tonight, I'll update again on Sunday. **

**My Emotional links to this story:**

***I threw a fit similar to Katara's last night and it was my dad that walked in and hugged me and calmed me down after I was finished ripping everything up. I sat in my car for an hour before going in my house too. Pouring down rain, radio blarring, yadda yadda.**

***I stare at my relfection in the mirror all the time and I think that I'm still the pitiful little girl that cried all the time when something bad happened. I don't feel like all the bad things really made me strong at all. **

***I was never raped or touched in any way, but a few of my friends were and they told me everything. From who it was to how old they were and how they felt and why they don't trust people. It's terrible and it's not all just girls either. If anything like that ever happened to you and you feel uncomfortable reading my story, I understand if you stop.**

**So, it makes it easy to write since I can connect to the emotions, but sometimes I cry and a type through it and when my mom walks by my room and asks what the hells wrong with me I say, "This is what epic writing looks like." and I stare at my screen through my tears.**

* * *

**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **As Prince, Zuko takes up diplomatic responsibilities to meet and greet some extended family of his from the southern ring of Egypt, yet Katara seems to recognize one of them from somewhere.

* * *

**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	20. Chapter 20

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Twenty: **_**Darkness in the Heart**

* * *

The Prince opened the doors to his mother's chambers and was again met with the same darkness that had draped over the room nearly a week before. He stood there a few minutes alone before venturing further, not bothering with the other rooms, or the sitting room where the dancer was most likely curled up on the couch—still dressed and fuming over the Pharaoh—and entered his mother's bedroom where the lights from the candles shined under the door.

The queen was sitting in the centre of her bed, still pale and shadowed under the eyes, with her hair drawn away from her face in braids. As he was about to address her, she turned over her shoulder and put a finger to her lips a silly grin on her waxy lips.

"Shhh, shhh, my son, come forth."

Cautiously, he did finding that, half-hidden by the curtains around the bed and lying with her head across his mother's lap was Katara.

He made a noise of outrage, but his mother only smiled, stroking the girl's locks gently. "Shhh, Zuko, Zuko, do not get angry. You do not know everything there is to know of this girl."

He stiffened, eyes falling upon the girl's sleeping face, and the vulnerably that was so clearly laid upon it. It was something he had never seen on her before. She always woke before he did, tending to the fire, staring out the window; Zuko sometimes wondered if she did sleep. When promoting to demand that she slept, she would often glare at him and say she did not need rest, she had plenty, _thank you. _Always acidic, of course.

He looked to his mother whose eyes were glazed but kind as always. There was something different about her, something not right.

"Zuko, my son," her voice called him to the present. "What do you plan to do to this girl?"

"Nothing mother, she is simply a dancer the Pharaoh brought to entertain."

"Really? Then why are you with her?"

"We were caught in the—"

"Zuko," His name on her lips is enough to halt his lie and he is reminded that his mother is not just a woman scorned by her husband, she is also a queen. She was a queen of two once separate kingdoms and the martyred princess sent to keep them together. She was the woman who loved her people even whilst they threw stones at her. She was the woman who devoted herself to a man who never loved her. She was the woman who gave him life and stayed with him when his first breath was halted, and everyone in the kingdom—physicians, priests, his father—thought he'd be dead by morning.

"My son, be wary where you step, these are dangerous times and dangerous kingdoms. This girl here," his eyes flickered back to the woman's face still asleep despite the talk happening above her. "Is not meant for the games you set her in. Free her; let her go."

Instantly, he recalled all the conversations he'd had with the woman when he first brought her to his Uncle's estate home.

"She has nowhere to go from here, we have a deal, once it's fulfilled, she is free to go and I'll be sure of her safe arrival myself."

* * *

When he woke the next morning, the woman was already up and about in his mother's library with a large book laid out in front of her. "Most of these were stolen from the South Pole, you know."

"Why were you in my mother's room last night?"

She looked up at him, blue eyes tired and shadowed heavily under her lids.

"I fell asleep. We stayed up talking."

"Really? What did you speak of? Did you tell her my plan?" As if sensing his discomfort, her eyes began to look more awake and alert. Her shoulders hunched and she drew into herself as almost in submission, but her expression was simply blasé.

"I said nothing—"

"Liar!"

"I am not!" She stood, slamming her hands into the table. "I do not lie! I told her nothing of your plan! Calm down!"

He glared. "And how was the meeting with my father?"

The question instantly seemed to affect her, as if she had been struck; she froze and her lips parted and shut for a few moments as if contemplating on what to say before her own eyes narrowed. Muttering a hasty oath under her breath, she darted out of the room.

"Disturbing."

* * *

The next few days they were graced with some distance from each other. The message had been spread throughout the kingdom by hailers and messenger-boys and guards.

"We caught the Man in Green."

Zuko noted the look of disappointment in the woman's eyes as she returned to her own quarters and shut herself up in the room. He supposed he could understand; in the end she would become a killer.

But in the end, she would also be a savior.

* * *

He entered her room through the secret passage and found her leaning over a bowl of water and her hand poised above it, making the water rise and fall from the bowl in lethargic movements that he'd seen her do so many times before.

"That's not going to kill anyone." He said to announce his presences and her wrist curled, bringing the water to a high arch and freezing it into a deadly wicked shape. "That might."

"What do you want?" She asked and stood from her place on the ground to cross her arms over her chest and locked her eyes with his. Composed and tall as any aristocrat, she looked like some displeased deity.

He shoved that image away and surveyed the room.

"Aren't you tired of being locked up in here?"

"No, I have your father's letters to keep me company." She gestured to the hearth and he noticed the jewels lying on the table near the fire as well. The chains of gold and ruby she had threaded through her hair to meet Ozai a week ago were nowhere to be seen. "Was that all or . . .?"

Zuko straightened His stance.

"My family is coming from the south by the Nile this afternoon and tonight there will be a dinner, my father will be there and—"

"No he won't."

"What?"

She waved a letter, flourished from her bodice, like it held the answers to the world. "He won't be there. He told me he was going to 'play hookie' and purposely not go."

Jaw slacked, Zuko almost didn't believe her. "Give me that."

Skimming the letter a few times he found that, indeed, his father was going to skip the meeting of his in-laws, and the dinner, all together. Groaning he set the letter to flames and watched the ashes seep through his fingers. "Is that bad?"

"Yes, it's bad. That means Azula and I have to run it . . ."

"Didn't Azula leave for her private beach house today?"

"Agni damnit!"

* * *

The ship pulled into dock and his mother's family descended the ramp in their finery and smiled at the crowd of people who hated them. His mother's sister was leading the pack and wrapped her arms around him. They looked nothing alike, in Zuko's mind, but when he was young Aunt Pyra would often stress the similarity between her and Ursa's hair color and noses.

Aunt Pyra's hair was gray and wiry, and her nose was long.

His mother's hair may now be dyed, but her nose was a graceful slope.

"Welcome aunt," he forced a smile for her and kept the pleasantries up as Aunt Pyra continued with a lengthy reintroduction to his cousins, Zalia and Jorgera, who batted their eyelashes and smiled as they were told.

"Oh, Prince Zuko, you've grown into a most appeasing male specimen."

"What a stern expression, you resemble much of the warriors from our past."

It was all artifice though, their cheap talk and plastered on smiles. Zalia and Jorgera never thought anything of Zuko—since he got his scar, not many women did—he was a sign of shame, of rebellion, someone to be ignored. His scar marked him as that, it was a symbol of something much unspoken, but everyone knew: he risked being assassinated for this mark.

What his lady cousin's hoped to gain from matrimony from him? He had no clue, but perhaps it would involve pinning for more freedom in the southern ring of Egypt. More money, more slaves, more more more.

An influential wife and a high ranking husband were a dangerous combination.

He couldn't really blame them.

Over the past seventeen years Southern Egypt had not really become the most ideal place to live; if they could change even a fraction of the conditions there, they would achieve a sort of status similar to sainthood in their midst. Sort of like his mother.

"Zuko!" At the sound of the familiar voice the Prince turned to find himself staring up at his older cousin, Lu Ten—well not _too _much, he had grown over the last months since he'd seen him last.

"Lu Ten!" Clasping each other's forearms, and grinning broadly the two princes greeted the other in a courtly fashion, but the smiles and shoulder clapping was enough for the wondering eye to note that the two were closer than standard family appearances. "How have you been? Where is Uncle?"

Lu Ten smiled and stroked his newly grown beard. "Couldn't even comment on this? Heh, little cousin?"

Smirking Zuko managed a petty comment on how he must have all the foreign women swooning and restated his earlier question. He had been getting letters from his Uncle, yes, but the furthering delay of his arrival set him on edge.

Where the battles at the boarder of Africa truly becoming that bad?

Uncle told him not to worry, not to worry, and likewise never mentioned anything other than the war and where he was and how he was feeling.

"I think he's taken to camp somewhere in the Nigeria provinces, he's running drills."

To a perfect T the stories matched up.

Call him paranoid, but he and his Uncle had made up a secret letter exchange when he first got his scar. There would always be a torn edge at the top of the paper too deliberate to be accidental and too unseen by the naked eye to be noticed.

The flourish of his name. The seal of his stamp.

Everything was matched and matched.

"Too bad," Zuko mused. "He will miss the feasting."

"Oh, he's feasting enough. That I know." Lu Ten smiled and clapped him on the shoulder again before assisting to the royal family off to their arranged litter back to the palace. "Good to see, little cousin!"

* * *

Katara stood among the crowd with a silk shawl of a highbred aristocrat wrapped around her shoulders as she stared into the distance of the capitol and kept a wary eye out for familiar faces. He knelt close to her ear. "Will you stop stealing from my mother's closet?"

"Ursa offered it, she said it would keep me warm and she was right. It's cold outside." As if to prove a point, she wrapped the shawl tighter around her shoulders and looked back to the southern royal family as they got into the rhino-horse carriage. "What are they doing here?"

"They're here to celebrate the merging of the two kingdoms." Zuko explained. "Today is my parent's anniversary, they come every year to celebrate, but no one really celebrates anymore. The southern ring is no longer a kingdom since Ozai took all their resources for himself and my mother no longer holds any favor. It's become a diplomatic occasion since it's easier to talk things over with them while they're in the lion's den, so to speak."

"Then why were all these people here?"

"They were hoping to see Ozai, or perhaps Ursa."

"What a disappointment, they ended up with you instead."

He's about to retort when a smaller voice called them back.

"Excuse me, my lady," Both looked down to see a small boy standing before them in a customary servant uniform of a page-boy. He smiled and presented a blooming fire lily to the Katara. "My master saw you from the helm of the welcoming party and wishes to know if you will accompany him to dinner tonight."

Zuko noted the seal and the carriage that had not yet gone.

Lu Ten. It had to be Lu Ten.

"Dinner tonight?" the Prince scoffed at the boy. "Tonight's dinner is for diplomats—!"

But the two were in their own little world, and Katara knelt down to the boy, though he was now taller than her, she gathered her skirts at her knees and smiled up at him before accepting the flower graciously and sniffing its scent. She smiled luminously and the boy flushed childishly under her gaze.

"Thank you, kind sir," she smiled again. "But I am afraid I already gave the my word to the King I would not go with any other man to the dinner tonight."

That's new.

"What?!"

Again, he fell upon deaf ears and the boy's smile was unbroken, eyes alighted with joy that could not be wavered after being addressed so formally by a lady of the court. "Then he shall attempt to capture for, but a few a sacred moments, your unrivaled attention."

He bowed and she feigned a curtsey, only standing once he had walked away and she twirled the stem of the lily around her fingers.

"I forgot to tell you, the Pharaoh has invited me to the private dinner." Her nose crinkled as if at the memory. "It must have slipped my mind."

"Why didn't you tell me this?"

"It slipped my mind, you made _this_ seem so important, and it was hardly a three-ring circus!"

"Dinner is much more important."

Much, much more important. They would discuss the very fabric of the kingdom tonight, negotiate terms and have long lengthy discussions on the gold importing and game hunting and the war with the Lands of Water and Ice.

"Why do I feel that it won't be?"

"Why are you even invited?"

"Your father said he wanted me to have a taste of the good life, high dining and high society and other flimsy whatnots."

"I've given you that already." Zuko yanked open the door of the carriage and Katara rose to step inside.

"Hardly." The woman laughed as she slid into her seat, only stopping when she caught the look that must have been on his face. Her smile dropped and evolved into something he had not seen before. "What is it, you highness?" she asked in a mocking dry tone. "Has your skin turned green with your jealousy?"

"J-jealousy! Absolutely not!" He nearly fell off the step.

She smiled, lips curling over her teeth. "And I think _you're_ a _lair_."

"Absolutely not," he composed himself and stood on the little up step that was meant to help him into the carriage, like he couldn't go inside until he cleared the air. "You belong to my father, the Pharaoh, the King and even so why would I be jealous? It's not like you'll actually fall head over heels for my father?" He smirked though he had his doubts.

They were instantaneously quelled when the woman's cheeks inflated and a ruddy flush of anger colored her cheeks. "I most certainly will not!" she cried and he felt a smile beginning to crack at the corners of his lips.

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah!"

"Etiquette, Queen Katara, etiquette." He chastised teasingly and fell back onto the cushioned seat adjacent from hers.

Third time he said her name, he's teasing.

The dancer gave him a funny look; blushing dying down and shoulders less tense. She crossed her arms over her chest and directed her attention to the window to her left, fast enough to give herself whiplash.

"I was merely joking." She huffed, then smiled at him. "So, when we return to the palace, I shall get ready for this evening, yes?"

"No." he deadpanned.

"You, my Prince, are _hell _sent."

* * *

Was he really surprised to see the dancer dressed to the nines in a fluttering red dress and decorated in jewels like the nighttime sky? No.

But the fact that she was standing before his bed chamber, out of breath and flushed defiantly surprised him.

"What are you—how did you—?" He's trying to knot his hair up when the woman cut him off by grabbing his wrist and began to pull him towards his door. "How did you get past the guards?"

"What guards?"

_Of all the—_

"What do you want?" he snapped.

"It's your mother; I think she's taken ill again." The dancer confessed, eyes swimming with worry and Zuko stared at her skeptically.

"You _think _or you _know_?" he asked and hoped it was just her imagination.

"That's just it. I _don't know. _She's been acting bizarre all day, and I've been with her. She's been smiling and singing and walking around her rooms, but it's like she's looking but not really seeing."

"She's sleepwalking. My mother sleepwalks."

Frustrated, her voice took up a more commanding tone. "Look, I'm not sure, but I think you should know—!"

He turned his back on her and headed back to his mirror to pull his hair back up into a topknot. "And _thank you _for telling me, but if it's not that serious, I think you'll be perfectly able to handle it."

"Your—"

"Katara, please!" Slamming his fist into the table, he nearly sent his hair piece crushing to the ground where it would crack and crumble into a million tiny ruby etched pieces.

The woman looked shocked.

"I need everything to go smoothly tonight. No mishaps or the usual like."

"But—!"

"Go! If my mother needs me, I give be there in two hours, three tops. If she is in such dire need of watch; you should be attending to her!"

When she left the room, she slammed the door so hard it made the glass vase nearest to it vibrate with the motion and topple over.

The sound of broke glass reminded him of the look in her eyes.

* * *

Zuko is the first in the dining hall, save the slaves who are working on last minute arrangements and when the first of the guests begin to arrive and are announced he is the one to first and foremost greet them and make small talk until the next one comes along.

Really, he'd rather take about fire blast to the face.

People were beginning to take their seats when he noticed a flash of red from the corner of his eye from the slave quarter doors.

It's Katara.

Zuko glared at her while she walked into the room and was greeted by two young generals, both flushed and smiling as they commented on her dress and how beautiful she looked; Zuko lunged forward and his fingers brushed the skin of her elbow. "Excuse us, generals; Mistress Katara agreed to be escorted by me this evening."

As he tugged her away he whispered in her ear, "I told you not to come."

She glared back at him, eyebrows drawling together. "And I told you; that something important has reached my notice."

He was about to snap back, but his Aunt Pyra caught sight of them and darted into their path as he's about to shove her out the door.

"Prince Zuko, who might this young lady be?" she asked, looking genuinely curious as her gold eyes hungrily roved over the woman's face—the natural beauty of it—and strained to place her as any aristocrat she studied from a book she kept of them.

"Oh, uh,"

His gaze swept the room to find everyone now staring at them, waiting to be introduced.

"Ladies and gentlemen," His back straightened instantly and he held the woman's hand in his as if she were a highbred lady and he did not want to shove her out a window. "This is Mistress Katara," he paused almost not knowing what to say next. The woman was obviously foreign, obviously not from around Egypt, lower ring or none, but his mind quick twisted up a lie. "From the Fire Colonies in the north."

He felt her hand tighten around his own almost cripplingly tight.

Either over the fact he still claimed her to be from the north, or the fact that he'd brought up the Fire Nation's annexation of some of the warmer regions of the Lands of Water and Ice.

"Oh! Which colony?"

Katara answered before him. "The Colony of Ignis-Aqua, where the remaining Ice and Water aristocrats reside."

They are all taking their seats and Katara is answering questions left and right, Zuko at the head of the table, where the Pharaoh sat, and Katara a few five seats down—adjacent from his usual chair and one away from Azula's. Lu Ten is a chair away from her.

"Now that I have a better look at you," a woman began. "Your skin is a tad dark."

"My great-grandmother's mother," Katara answered naturally. "The love story between a noble of the Watertribe's court and a Fire Nation general is quite the Oma and Shu romance of my family."

He's impressed and his aunt buys it easily.

"Ah, yes, I think I may have heard word of that." Aunt Pyra frowned. "It must be hard on your family, everyone thinking you are some lowly northerner while you are a fourth generation mix of fire blood, you can still not shake the most unattractive features. It must be hard to find a suitable husband."

Zalia giggled.

"Actually no," Still in a sickly sweet voice, she's forcing a smile with all of her teeth. "The only problems that occur are the terrible, terrible _brutality_ of the colonies."

Now _where _has she heard that?

That's probably why she chose it.

Everyone nodded, for most have heard of it, though it is Lu Ten who speaks next.

"I have been there most recently, Mistress Katara, and I must agree." Zuko raised his eyebrows as if to say: _do you now? _and the dancer is wearing a similar look. "Yes, it is absolutely revolting to see the filth's blood lying about in that . . . uh . . ."

"Snow?" she offered.

"Ah, yes, snow." Lu Ten smiled. "It's as if you read my mind."

"You are most welcome." Her voice hit a pitch almost too sweet and the Prince swears he saw her eyes flash.

* * *

Three courses in, Zuko has won the debate of foreign trades and is slowly working himself through the generals and explaining his ideas for the movement to minimize rebellion the annexation of the Lands of Earth with minimal bloodshed. And he's proud and happy and even though he feels at the top of his game and no one could stop him; his eyes flicker occasionally towards the other end of the table. Watching his cousin carefully as he stared at Katara with the same intensity of lust his father looked at her with, but Katara—mighty as ever—remained calm and calculating. Taking a dainty drink of wine from her chalice, the gleaming gold of her jewelry caught the light of the candelabras around her making her shine like gold.

He couldn't tear his gaze away if he tried.

She easily adapted into the conversation, answering questions left and right on the Ignis-Aqua Colony and the slave labor being forced upon the Watertribe minority. He sees her jaw flex distastefully once or twice during the conversation, but otherwise she manages not to slit any throats.

"Mistress Katara," Lu Ten began slowly, mouth not quite moving with his words. "How long have you been in Egypt?"

Katara looked at him, measuring his importance by where he sat and answered with a curt, "Awhile, I suppose." Her answers are much more blasé towards him, he noticed, and numerous. Lu Ten could not take his eyes off of her, or the fire lily she had weaved into her hair.

"Really? I don't know how I could have missed you. . ." The 'complement' hung in the air and was scarcely heard from Zuko's side of the table, but he watched the two. Ears straining to hear just as Lu Ten strained over Azula's empty seat to be closer to her. Katara seemed to almost shy away from his advances rather that counteract them like she usually did. She took such joy in unmanning the lower crust the male species; Lu Ten was a perfect specimen for her.

She looked nervous, actually, failing to meet his eyes on multiple occasions.

Zuko's eyes flickered to the right of him—his mother's family; her unfortunately ugly sister, Aunt Pyra, with her unfortunately in debt husband and their unfortunately ruined daughters that prettily batted their muddled topaz eyes at him from behind their wooden fans.

He knew he had to be nice to them—for his mother's sake—but if Zalia and Jorgera kept looking at him with those suggestive looks he was sure he was going to hurl under the table, or make a mad dash for the door and hide until they left.

If he was to marry either of them, he'd surly kill himself.

Suddenly, Katara jumped. Her lips pulled back over her teeth and her eyes flashed in a look of . . . repulsion? Zuko watched her scoot away from the table and stand, making the room go quiet; he studied her gaze as it swept the table of important generals and war heroes and politicians only to find a regal command in her eyes.

"Please excuse me, but I am feeling a tad under the weather this evening, I think I shall retire." She pressed a hand to her forehead and her eyes lulled in a sort of fatigue. The men at the table all smiled and nodded, bidding her goodnight.

Zalia and Jorgera snorted impolitely and were quickly reprimanded by their mother.

"Would you be needing someone to escort you to your rooms, Mistress Katara?" Lu Ten asked politely.

"No, thank you," the words seemed to sweetly drip venom. "I am sure the Prince could take me."

That was followed by a long moment a silence. Silence in which many, many, many new gossip stories were either born, thought upon, or confirmed.

Was the new Mistress Katara with the foreign features pinning after the Pharaoh? And the Prince?

All eyes turned to him and the Prince found his face flushing angry crimson.

The woman gave a formal sweeping curtsey to the table and backed out.

Zuko followed her, thunderously. "What are you doing? You and me being seen together is not good!"

She ran a short way down the corridor before turning to face him; in her hand was a crushed fire lily she ripped from her hair, it withered in her fist.

"It was the only way!" She snapped and continued her way down the corridor.

Apart of him realized she was right. She couldn't very well leave on her own, that would be too scandalous, and if she left with another escort it people would think he was keeping the supposed 'royal colonist' in a broom closet! Still, he couldn't exactly find his wits after the looks that had been cast at him through the dining hall.

"Do you _want _to die!?" He roared at her retreating back and she froze in mid-step, shoulder's trembling and fists curling in.

"I—I'm sorry."

Zuko suddenly halted.

Was she. . ._crying_?

"What's the matter?" His voice hit a softer tone, one he did not know he possessed.

He heard sniffling and she turned, her eyes were glassy yet no tears fell. As if she were holding them back with all she had, no tears were going to dare to roll down her face. "Of course, I'm fine. Just tired." She took a moment to compose herself. "But Urs—the queen, she is not alright."

"What?"

"She—" the woman let out a shaky breath and clutched at her neck like the very words were suffocating her. "I'm sorry, I just, I can't—I can't believe I didn't realize this before it's so . . ."

"What!?" he howled, growing increasingly more and more irritated with her stuttering, especially on account of his mother.

"The insence in her room are not incences, they are mercury."

"Mercury . . . ?" His eyebrows drew together, having heard the word many times before in old stories of his ancestors.

The woman nodded to explain.

"It's a compound of sorts, and when it's burned the scent of it is said to make people lose their minds to insanity and . . . if applied for a long enough time . . . they'll . . . die."

He was running to his mother's room before she could say another word.

* * *

**Hey guys~! It's Monday! And thank you for your support, especially **Ksmitterley **thanks for the words of wisdom and encouragment.**

**Okay, there's a killer writing contest coming up that I won last year for Most Creative, so the next two chapters should be out by the end of the week because do or die is coming up soon.**

**Sorry if this sucks, I'll fix it later if I come to my senses in the morning. But this is TWELVE PAGES and 5,000+ words. And I had to break this chapter into three! **

**Notes on Story:**

***In Egyptian times, mercury was given as an incent to somone one you don't like. It would be a slow process of death that would take the course of months and regular exposure to, but the before effects were insanity due to the killing off of brain cells or something of a very painful nature. (It's very weird that they teach us how to commit murder in our school, there's a class where you have to write a paper on commiting a murder and then an analysis on the evidence that would be found.**

***I'm just noticing all the themes here: family, hurt/comfort, adventure, murder, and the life lessons which I had in my head and now escape me.**

*****GirlWithAWritersSoul **you're assumtion was correct and yes, Lu Ten is the man from Katara's past.**

***Let's keep in mind that we never knew Lu Ten or his character, and that even though he was raised by Iroh, everyone wears masks to appease the ones around them. He's the Humbert Humbert of this story and I've got the next chap all locked and ready to go for Thursday at the earlist. **

**All haters to the left~**

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**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **The world is full of monsters and demons that haunt your life, and for Katara, it's time for her to face her own.

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**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	21. Chapter 21

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Twenty-One: **_**A ****Girl Named Ekatarian**

* * *

_He's here! He's here! He's here. He's here! _Those words replayed in her mind like a mantra, a war cry, a signal to someone that may help her, but no one would. No one cared about those who were lost in the night, they may idly fret, or think of them for a fleeting second, but without such thoughts they were as good as gone—as was she.

She's running, dead center down the corridor as if she expected him to lunge from the shadows or one of those doors that perforated the hall and grab her, and draw her back into them where she was weak and could not get free.

Picking up her skirts, she ran, not entirely sure of what she was yet running from, but she felt the feeling pulse deep within her heart and spread to her feet like a frightened animal of prey running from a hungry beast, she kept running.

And the demons were on her, faster in their strides and surer in foot, they followed her no matter where she went, wherever she may go, they would follow because they wanted her. They saw her strength and patchwork defiance and sought to tear her down again like the proud little girl she'd found before her. They couldn't let her build her hope and buy her time, she had to be dormant, they had to stifle her light.

Katara paused when she heard pursuit behind her and looked over her shoulder to find the devil lingering in the shadows, swaying as if under some great weight and calling out to her.

Calling and calling and commanding.

Was she such a bad girl for running when she heard his voice?

Pillars and flagstone became a blur as they all rushed past her and soon run out as she turned down another hall and kicked her shoes from her feet before taking to a flight of stairs.

And he followed her.

He was like some demon that appeared in shadows.

It was dark. The whole world was in shadow.

Her breathe was flames and the effects of Lady Ursa's poison were not yet from her system. They suffocated her in the smoke and addled her mind. Where were the shadows? Why shadows? Would the sun ever rise? Where was she?

So dark, so alone, so afraid.

It's how everyone was born in this world. Those who could hope to strike a match had to keep it safe.

Soft grass kissed her feet and Katara knew she was in the garden on the farthest corner of palace, farther than she'd ever dared to venture. The growing moon hung above her with a silvery, heavenly, glow that reminded her of the temples in the South Pole. The purity of it felt wrong and suddenly she found herself wishing for a moonless night, the nights that drained her and helped her sleep. Helped her forget.

"Mis-tress Katar-ah."

A cold, cold hand grabbed for her elbow and she jumped and reeled back.

Not even the Prince's hands were that cold.

Muddled gold eyes stared back at her and a soft smile graced the lips of the man with them. His gaze sobered her some.

_He should not be allowed to smile like that. _She thought and her eyes widened when his face is too touched by the light and every shadow was removed and he's lain bare beneath the glow. Handsome and Egyptian, not an odd mix, but what dwelled beneath his skin made his appearance sinfully horrifying. _Demons should not have angel faces._

"You . . ." she heard herself whisper, but for the life of her she cannot look away. She can't put her mask on, she can't look away, and she can't run. He's petrified her with some unseen spell and _she can't get away._

"Mistress Katara," His hand reached out and touched her shoulder and his cold seeped through the fabric and made a trail up her neck to her cheek. "Mistress Katara. Katara, Katara."

—_He'd always had an affliction with her name. He loved to roll it off his tongue with a distinctive drawl and savor it on his lips like a kiss of honey; he'd place to her rosy dark skin—_

His name was Captain Lu Ten.

He was a Prince, much unlike the one she knew, but not entirely different.

She could never find herself to say his name.

_—He's kind and evil and terrible and beautiful and a man. Don't trust, don't trust! Her mind screamed but when he ushered her out of her cell with the promise of food, she crawled on her hands and knees out of the light from her porthole window towards the darkness, towards him. She should have never done that. She should have never trusted, even for the slightest second, she was going to draw back, she was going to go back—_

He leant forward nuzzling his head into the crook of her shoulder and inhaling her scent like a bloodhound so may never lose her again.

_—He's cold and bleeds all warmth from her as if she was an animal left hung upside down to bleed so he could have her meat. She can't get away, while she is but a bunny running from a hybrid creature of grace and strength that she cannot get away from—_

"Ekatarian . . . you've become so beautiful . . ."

That name.

That wretched, wretched name and wretched, wretched beauty.

She didn't want it. She didn't ask for it.

With a cry out outrage and she wrenched herself away, but the bravado was over before it could begin and he snared her wrist easily in his hand and it's dwarfed by his size and he shackled her wrists like he had so many times before.

Her breath became frantic and he was smiling at her with the same way he had before. "Years have not been kind to you, I see. Tell me, Ekatarian," He's pulling her towards him, and his name is practically rolling off his tongue like sweet honey. "Could my uncle tell you were not a virgin when he had you, or did he simply expect it?"

She pulled her wrists away and stumped back, shaking so badly she wound her hands into fists to defend herself.

How can she defend herself?

How can she . . . defend . . . herself . . . against a demon?

"Come now Ekatarian, don't be that way." He smirked at her. "Let us catch up like old friends. You do trust me don't you?"

"I—I never trusted you!" She growled but it didn't come out as half as menacing as she'd hoped.

He frowned.

It was a lie.

"How dare you, little princess. How dare you trust me? I was your enemy, but you played right into my hands. You thought I was going to take care of you, you thought I would feed you and tell you everything was alright and help you get home. You were delirious with fairytales of captive princesses and kind princes. You were naïve and stupid and I cured you of that."

Rage took her and her fists grew cold from the tightening of her grip.

_His words are poison! Don't believe him! Don't believe him! Don't _listen!_  
_

"Cured me!? You destroyed me! How _dare _you!?"

"It was a game and you lost." He shrugged and Katara's fists shook. "The game is a chessboard, you were a queen piece and you lost to a knight posing as a bishop."

He turned his back on her and began retreating back into the palace.

"And now you're nothing, I was hoping this little experiment might give you teeth, but you're still that spoiled little girl. Don't you know you're not a princess anymore? You're trapped here and you'll never see your beloved homeland ever again. Who knows; with your sins, you might never see it even in death."

_Poison, poison! Don't you dare listen!_

She felt the same tug she did every time she bended water. The cool that overtook her hands as the ice partials began to fleck at her knuckles.

Her bending.

Yes, the one thing she couldn't use when she was young. The one thing that made her strong and stayed with her like a keep safe; the one thing that kept her aloft now will bring him down.

"I'll kill you!" she screamed and in a blur something reached out to him and wrapped around his neck and snapped across his back protected by customary armor.

It was water. Water turned ice.

Glittering silver in the moonlight and creating a link between the two.

He made a noise of shock and then the ice began to melt away.

_He's stronger than me. He'll kill me. This time he will._

Looking around frantically she spotted the turtle-duck pond a few yards away and dashed for it. Her feet tripped under her.

"Now, I can't have you running. Muffle your screams will you? I'm sure you remember how."

And orange glow radiated behind her and Katara jumped up when the fire cracked across her of her back, right over the diagonal slashes that marred her skin.

She didn't dare even try to scream, it was futile regardless.

Fire burned her skin and seared to her bone.

In the end it was always a stronger element.

It was pain, pain, pain that she was too well acquainted with.

A foot rolled her over and she sunk beneath the surface of the silvery water.

* * *

_Princess Ekatarian was smiling up at her mother whom she resembled so much when she smiled they were like each other's doppelgängers. Twins. Older and younger. Beautiful and kind._

_Queen Kya is smiling back down at her, pinching at the chub of her cheeks and then tucking a loose curl behind her ear and pressing a kiss to her daughter's forehead. "My darling girl, my little one," She would always say that to her, her brother was her father's territory, but Princess Ekatarian belonged solely to her mother and grandmother._

Why was she thinking of this?

_Prince Sokka was silly; always trying to be so serious but wherever he ventured, and Princess Ekatarian loved her brother's antics. He wanted to be a warrior and practiced constantly with his boomerang and hope he hit something that wasn't the back of his head._

_They were siblings, and he taught her petty defense, and weapons, and anything._

Why am I torturing myself?

_Her father was a king and a warrior, and though she looked like her mother, her spirit was all his and he saw that in her. The defiance that made her a princess, the bullheadedness that made her a winner, and the drive to fight that made her a warrior. He taught her strength, not in the physical sense but down to her core where unwavering resilience was welded from the death of her childhood._

Am I dead in your eyes now?

_Grandmother was elegant in her teachings; the ways of old, how to love and be loved, the power of the human spirit and not just bending or spirits or magic, but the life that bonded her to this earth and her parents and her people. To them, she would always belong. To them, she would never die._

Immortalized like the kings of old in ice caskets.

* * *

_I am a princess._

It's an astonishing truth and it's painful in a way.

_I am a princess and crumbling._

No kingdom, no crown, nothing.

_I'm a dancer and a street urchin. I was trained how to seduce the men who hurt me and I did it all with a smile and harboring of secret hatred._

She had her resilience to her.

_But what to protect?_

Herself, she was the most important thing right now. Herself and her needs.

_I am a princess, but I am not weak._

* * *

She rose from the water, arms raising upward and the water moved to her will and wrapped around him once again; this time not turning to ice so he couldn't melt it away, but solid water bending and moving around him like an unmoving resistance that could not be altered.

And she used that force to drag the devil back into the water and held him under until his thrashing stopped.

Making herself no better than him, she stumbled away and left him floating face up in the pond with the turtle-ducks.

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**This is one of my favorite chapters, but it had to be trippy and strange and not easy to follow, so everyone could take on their own perception. This is why we don't do drugs children. Lu Ten's reaction to Katara works for me because he's not all-over her 'I want you again', or tried to do anything to her, or act like he hadn't hurt her. Lu Ten acts like it was all a game, a step he had to take to get to the next challenege. Therefore, Katara is unimportant to him.**

**Due to my class on how to commit the perfect murder I'm learning it is REALLY hard to kill someone with blunt force trauma and/or suffocation. That class is fun. Not that I would ever kill anyone :) Except fictional characters, they are MINE.**

**Sorry for the late-ish update, I had a writing contest and last week and its always before and after I turn in my final manuscript Im stressed enough to give me gray hair, I needed a break from my to midnight editing parties and depleting my over usage of commas. I needed a few days off, and some sleepovers, and some trips to the library and to get some working hours in. XD**

**In Other News: I met JAMES KENNEDY author of The Order of the Odd Fish, which I highly recommend. It's hilarious.**

**MiniRant: MY BIRTHDAYS ON FIRDAY! WHOO-HOO! and there's nothing to do is this sucky town and it's making me nauseous.**

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**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **Locked in a beautiful cage doesn't take away from the fact that your trapped. The Prince and Katara have to learn to trust each other and with trust, they must share there secrets.

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**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	22. Chapter 22

**Don't worry **Ash **I didn't write this story to disappoint ;) Like I said in my author's note last chapter, I gave you all a hint. And it's killing me not to tell anyone, but the suspense is the best part. This story is the product of my dreams and nightmares, and they get _creative_. Muawaha, don't underestimate the things that I will do~ Bear with me?**

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_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Twenty-Two**_**: I Dreamed a Dream**

* * *

_"I dreamed a dream and time gone by_

_When hope was high and life worth living."_

* * *

The Prince had taken to hovering over his mother as the healers worked on her, checking to be sure they actually were helping instead of hurting—he was more cautious than he ever had been in his life about the people around him these days. Queen Ursa was sleeping, as they had found her, pale as a sheet and features waxy, the healers seemed skeptical that she'd be able to pull through. When she awoke next, she might have completely lost her wits completely—if she woke up, that is.

If she hadn't breathed in too much mercury—.

If the gods leant her enough strength—.

If she was lucky—.

His world was swimming in a tidal wave of _if_'s and _when_'s and dotted with the hollowed corpses of prayers that would always be unanswered.

Prince Zuko wanted to think of his own _if_'s now.

If he wasn't a prince—.

If he did not live in Egypt—.

If the gods cared and listened—.

Would he be happier?

* * *

He had been in the infirmary a few hours now, the night was wearing on and on and all he could do was staring at his unresponsive mother lying on her cot.

Her rooms were being aired out; it was not safe to be in there anymore. The healer had even checked him for signs of mercury poisoning, as well, and had asked if anyone else had been exposed to it as long as the queen had.

That's when he started to recall Katara. Where had she gone off to?

* * *

Hours later he was woken by the bustling of healers and screams of nurses. Since the royal family and their guest were always treated for ailments in their own private rooms, the infirmary had no closed off areas where the patients could be privately examined—everything was an open, bleak white space.

Raising his head from his mother's bedside he found a cluster of doctors and healers swarming a bed three down from his mother's. And in the centre of the chaos?—Katara.

The dancer was sitting upright on the bed—just barely—surrounded by healers shouldering themselves trying to get around her all at once and shooting off questions when all she could really do was groan in pain, like an animal. They began to peel away at the fabric of her dress and pressed fresh towel to her back that quickly bled to red in a matter of seconds.

She was hurt, injured, wounded.

Zuko's line of vision was cut off as a curtain drew around the cot.

* * *

The doctors left hours later, hands painted red from blood and leaving the curtains drawn around the dancer's cot. Zuko watched them quietly as they washed their hands, and all traces of their deeds were purified by the element Katara bended so well. They muttered amongst themselves—the mercury in her system had saved her, taken her away from the pain, but come morning her merger exposure to the drug would be worn off and she would be needing a hefty dosage if she wanted to stand.

At least, he knew she was alive.

The silence wore on and Zuko stood, slowly making his way over to Katara's bed and brushing back the linen curtain to find a site that was truly horrifying.

They'd laid Katara on her stomach—and it looked like she'd be sleeping like that for a long, long time. Across her back, adjoining the few scars he'd once seen there was a blood mesh of flesh covered by bandages and cleaned with crimson tinted water.

She was staring at him, blue eyes made bluer by the red the salt of her tears dyed to the whites of her eyes.

"What happened?" he asked, nearly recognizing the sound of his own voice. Katara's watery blue eyes glanced up at him and buried her face into her pillow once again, choking sobs into the cotton.

"I can't—"

"Yes, you can." He pressed and knelt by the cot, closer to her tear-stained face. "As you've said before," He whispered, almost fearing someone would hear him. "We are _allies_; I need to know what happened to you—who did this to you. Nothing can alter the mission."

_Yes, that's it._

She stared up at him dejectedly for a few more moments and scoffed.

"No."

"Yes."

"No—it deals with my past, I have a right to keep that to myself."

_Still, _the older part of his mind, the one more like his mother—who saw the good and allegiance in everyone—urged him to think with human compassion. _She looks at me like she's someone who bares scars as well, and not just the physical ones._

"Katara," She still didn't look at him. "Tell me, I want to know."

"No—"

"Katara—"

"I'm _tired._"

That he knew. With her injuries and her surgery, he was surprised she was even conscious right now.

He knew he _should _let her sleep, but . . . he _wanted _to be selfish. He wanted to know what hurt her, he wanted to know _now._

He grabbed her clasped fist in his hand and held it. Unlike all the other girl's hands he held—his mother, Azula, Mai—hers felt different, warm and wet from tears, clasped and white-knuckled from her fist, molded and unmoving from shock. "Katara, tell me."

Her expression was pained like she's about to do something she really didn't want to do, and she took a shaky breath before speaking, her voice was brittle and quiet.

"I wasn't born here, as you know," Her jaw flexed and her eyes rolled close. "I cannot _believe—_"

He waited for a snarky remark.

"—everything that's happened. I was kidnapped from my home when I was six-years-old. It was summer and we'd just had a bout of unseasonable snow, but days earlier my father rotated our campsite closer to the ocean so we could hunt for seals to make hides for next winter . . . I remember playing outside with my brother in the snow . . . and my mother was sitting with my grandmother speaking of names for a new child because I was to become an elder sister in a matter of months . . ." Her voice was beginning to shake a little, he caught it like the scraggly edges of old fabric. "The slave traders came and it was a day the sky of my village turned black. Bells were ringing and people were shouting and there was so much noise . . . It was soon discovered that they weren't after Waterbenders, like they had in the Ignis-Aqua Colony, but children. They wanted our future.

"They grabbed me when I tried to run. My father was fighting them off in the thicket of the warriors, but I still remember thinking that maybe if I screamed loud enough he would hear me." She laughed and it was a dry humorless sound. "It was my mother that tried to save me, followed me, she snuck up behind the man and managed to save my brother and she had me in her arms when they caught her. My mother was clutching onto me and she kept repeating over and over that she wasn't going to let me go . . . I can still remember every detail of his face: strong and collected," Obviously she was now speaking of the general. "But savage and bloodstained. He had no soul; I couldn't find it in his eyes. Just glassy gold. . ." Katara was visibly shaken; the Prince knew what was coming next but once the words left her mouth a wave of gooseflesh crept up his arms. "He . . . grabbed my mother by her hair and dragged her up, as soon as the moment presented itself he dug his knife deep into her neck . . . then _pulled._"

Katara's eyes didn't lower, her voice stayed clipped and cryptic. Zuko's breath caught. "He spilled _her _blood over _me. _It went everywhere: stained my blue dress, my hair, circled my arms, and trailed down my fingertips into the snow . . ." She gave another shaken breath. "One thing I regret is . . . looking up. Her blood fell into my eyes, but before that I saw her neck hanging open, I saw the broken veins and the bone of the back of her neck and up to her tongue."

Zuko stared, the images, as clear as they would be in his own mind, flashed before him. His fingers clenched his teeth gridded. He suddenly felt the urge to kill that man.

"And you'd think . . . my suffering would end there?" She muttered. "They broke my grandmother's legs, and dragged my brother and me onto ships, _separate _ships. I screamed and cried the entire night. I was the only female of the lot of children, the only one." She looked at Zuko. "You'd never understand this . . . being a male child and all, but do you know how strict parents are of their daughters? To protect them from men?"

_No, _he prayed. _Oh Agni, please no. Not to _her. _Not to Katara._

"I won't go into detail, but . . ." She was quiet for a very long moment and her eyes were closed and tears were now freely flowing down her cheeks. "He broke me . . . he hurt me in ways I can't begin to describe . . ."

She could not look up.

"I wanted to die with my mother . . . I was ready to die there . . . my family could have had closure then. But instead I was brought here and tortured to the extent where who I was; I couldn't recognize myself anymore. . ."

She breathed and tears were brimming in her eyes, hot and heavy.

"And . . . do you know who this man was?"

Zuko didn't dare to move.

". . . Iroh's son, your cousin."

He broke then.

* * *

Moments passed like hours, Katara was crying and Zuko was staring at the ceiling as if he wanted to hang himself from the rafters. The thought was grotesque, but palpable. It didn't have to be him hanging from the rafters of the infirmary; it could easily be Lu Ten, or his father. Really, anyone would do right now.

But Lu Ten, Lu Ten his cousin, Lu Ten his uncle's son.

Could Lu Ten really do something that _terrible_?

"You're lying . . ." he whispered and Katara's cries grew in volume.

"I do not lie!"

He stared at her a moment and remembered the dinner party hours ago. How Katara seemed to be spinning on an axis away from Lu Ten, jumping at his touching, his glance, and his remarks towards her like the very sight of him was repulsing to her. A terrible wrong had been done to her by him.

"I know . . ." he croaked, and his hand squeezed hers in an assuring pressure. "I'm sorry . . ."

She nodded into her pillow crying still and Zuko's eyes flinted to her back, assessing the bandages and wrappings placed on it.

"Did he . . . do this to you . . . ?" His voice quivered and his hand clamped tighter around Katara's. "Katara, tell me."

Her name, in his voice and in his mind, was becoming so accustomed there, nesting and expanding as she weaved herself more and more into his daily life like the water that curls around the Nile and expanded into broader oceans. She was important to him, someone like his mother, someone he wanted to protect.

Yet unlike his mother's attack—he might have his chance of vengeance towards Katara's attacker.

". . .yes . . . he saw me bend . . ." He nodded and began to map out the palace in his mind, the short distance from the infirmary to the royal wing, to Lu Ten's room.

"Don't worry of it, I'll take care of him." he murmured and Katara's breaths came quicker and quicker, bloodshot red eyes peering into his gold ones.

"I—I think I already did."

* * *

**Hey guys! Gah, I'm sick. I couldn't talk when I woke up this morning and I stayed home because well school is depressing and I'm seeing my councelor way more than I should, so I'm staying home and speaking in the only real way I know how: writing. Ah, beautiful, glorious writing. **

**I was a bit surprised by the response of the last chapters reviews? Don't you all know be by now ;P You could interrogate my locsest friends right now, but they will know nothing because I am _not _telling anyone about what's happening next right now. Muwahahha! **

**Notes:**

**The Chapter Title: "I Dreamed a Dream" is a song from _Les Miserables _sung by Anne Hathaway (and various other people) and although I wrote this chapter sobbing over many other songs, when I heard this song in the theather all I was thinking of was: KataraKataraKatara Katara's childhood and Katara's mother and Lu Ten (that mofo). Listen to it.**

**Relationship: Do you think Katara and Zuko's relationship is taking a positive turn here? Let me know!**

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**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **Pieces fall into place one after another. Bodies are missing and magic is in the air, the world is topsy-turvy and, as usual, things go bump in the night.

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**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	23. Chapter 23

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Twenty-Three**_**: Mad World**

* * *

Sunrise was a sight she longed to see.

After all these years of scorning the rising of a new day—like the rising of the Firebenders—and watching the cool blue sky turn to scalding red, she wanted to see the sun rise more than anything. She wanted to watch the blood of those who died in the night paint the sky a vivid and brilliant red, so clear everyone would know evil had been slain the night previous.

But then she didn't want to see it.

Burying her face into her pillow and crying softly, she reminisced the Prince's face when he left her at the darkness before the dawn—the time he could sense in his bones—to fetch the evidence of her crimes and dispose of them.

_I've sent him to collect his cousin—practically his brother. _She thought ironically and wondered how close had they been. Obvious age difference aside, they might have learnt bending together, possibly stunk down to grand parties to steal food like she and her own brother had. He had not spoken of him, but they may have been close. _What have I done?_

She'd killed someone. She'd taken a life.

Against her vows as a Watertribe princess, against human nature, against the very laws of Tui and La.

_Isn't it a woman's function to _give _life? _When she was younger, still playing with baby dolls, she may have wanted children—pretended Sokka was her husband and fed her dolls ice chips—and had been overjoyed when she heard she may be getting a new brother or sister that it would be _her _job to look out for, not Sokka's. But here, children and motherhood didn't seem to be much of a divine luxury. Harsh conditions make for malformed babies.

In the South Pole, she had been at perfect peace.

Whereas, there was Queen Ursa, and how her children ended up.

Princess Azula who was said to be like a flower, with all the beauty and lovely amiability of someone of the Egyptian court, but attractive with a venomous air about her that suffocated innocence's when they got too close as she drew them in. And Prince Zuko who was scarred beyond recognition and sought to kill his own father out of revenge for his face and honor.

She shivered, but she knew deep down that she thought Zuko's motives were justified.

They were at war. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

And Lu Ten would have gotten in the way at one point or another.

* * *

Mercury was wearing from her veins and the pain was slowly creeping its talons along the length of arms and legs and back. At first, they'd been like pin-pricks, gentle and rapid tapping of needles that tingled a length up and down her spine. And then they began to push inward. Her innards began to hurt; her stomach twisting with the ferocity of one ringing an empty waterskin clenched at her and applied gentle pressure to her heart as if someone's hand was teasingly wrapped around it.

She deserved this. She so out rightly deserved this for killing.

Even if he was a bad man, she still took a life.

_Iroh, _she thought. _What would he think?_

"My Lady, we are prepared to give you an elixir, to help the pain." The doctor murmured softly over her and Katara shook her head furiously, fingers curling with the sheets.

"N—no. No, medicine."

"But—my Lady—"

"No!" She gridded her teeth like a savage animal.

"Have you gone mad child? This pain . . . it's . . . it's . . ."

"Bearable. It's _bearable. _Now leave me, and draw the curtain. _Now_."

They did as instructed, for once.

* * *

Days passed and the pain dulled, the Prince had not been available to see her, but the King seemed to be regular company—no guards, no doctors, no politicians, it would have been the opportune moment to kill him, but . . . she couldn't find that malice in herself, not now.

"Katara, dearest Katara," he cooed over her with an expression that barely passed as sympathetic. Katara would have snorted it she could. He was only upset that the moment he was 'physically able' it seemed that she was not.

_He sounds like Lu Ten, too much like him. My wounds probably wouldn't stop him either._

With that thought in mind Katara embellished her wounds, and in her best small voice, cried about the pain, the unbearable pain, that kept her up night and day, day and night.

"What of your doctor's, Mistress? What do they say?"

"Their remedies help me not." She answered quietly and hoped that her healer had not complained of her not taking any of the elixir he presented to her some days ago. "I have simply tried everything . . ."

"And that scarring . . ." Ozai said, his nose turning slightly in disgust and Katara could slowly feel their plan ebbing south. She had not even had time to think about scarring, but she would have guessed that it didn't matter, so long as Ozai never saw it.

"My love . . ." Her fingers were weak and trembled as they touched his hand—his cold, smooth hand—and drew it too her lips. "Will you not love me anymore? Does my malformation insult you?"

He took her hand and cradled it to his own lips, bringing their foreheads together and they sat quietly for a while, like she and the Prince had nights previous.

Yet, with Zuko's fingers entwined with hers, she'd felt at peace.

"I will not let your beauty be altered by this terrible accident."

* * *

Hours later, darkness had overtaken the infirmary and the last of the healers had left her to her bed after her bandages were removed. Ribs aching and blood cracking along her back, they took more care to pick out silk, hair, and sand from her wounds than they did earlier—her wounds needed to be clean, clean and rubbed with oil since she didn't mind the sting as much. They left her back unwrapped and open when they shut the door.

Katara stared on, wondering what she should do.

The queen had been removed from the infirmary previous to the Pharaoh's visit into private rooms only the Prince and a chosen few knew about, and she was alone in the darkness. Only the sounds of her own breath and the wind against outside.

Between a heartbeat and a breath of wind, something in the walls creaked.

Stone against stone echoed through the room—like a door opening.

"Katara?" a voice called through the dark, soft and going like the tide—the Prince. He drew back the curtain and raised his torch to her. "Good you are awake." He slipped the torch into a holster on the stone wall and knelt beside her. "I've brought someone who may be able to help you."

"Where have you been?" Katara asked quietly, wondering how her voice could choke so much on one sentence.

The Prince looked surprised for a moment. "The Pharaoh, he kept me to my rooms." He shrugged and pulled the curtain back further to reveal another person standing beside him.

The woman was an old crone with fleeting starling silver eyes and wiry gray hair coiled onto the back of her head. Her face was severe and wrinkled tightly around her mouth and eyes like she had always worn a calculating expression. She was round from age and perhaps childbirth, but showed no sign of age in her agile steps. Much like Iroh, she walked silently.

Her head tilted to the side like a cat inspecting her next kill and her wrinkled lips curled over her teeth. "I see," she muttered and the noise wrapped around the room like the creaking of floorboards and the howling of wind. "This is your girl then? You're dearly beloved _paramour_?" The word was foreign and said with a defiant flourish that made Katara think of nobility.

The Prince's frown remained emanate on his face. "Just heal her, _please."_

The woman looked at her again, kneeling closer to eye level and inspecting her face. "You," Her voice came out, shaken slightly yet curious. "You are of the Tribes."

Delirious with pain and her earlier panic, Katara nodded, slowly. "Yes, yes, I am. The Southern Kingdom, despite what everyone else may think. I am a true born and bred Southern Tribe."

Something in the woman's face, her wrinkled and stern expression, softened as her hand outstretched and laid on the apex of Katara's right shoulder which was bare of clothing and any sort of marking. Her hands were cool, in a good way, like a cube of ice lying across a burning wound. "As am I," she said.

The woman made quick work then, drawing water from the bowl placed at the edge of her bed and raising it into the air were it circled and swirled around before settling onto her skin like a cool and watery glove. The water began to glow blue, bright and brilliant, as luminous as fire and darker than the sun.

* * *

The pain was all but gone, seeping from her bones and Hama—as she learnt her name was—spoke in her in calming, cool tones. She told her stories as she worked stories of her childhood and a time where the Nations lived in an artifice harmony that allowed their people to live separately from the games of politics fought by the northern most nations.

"I was a lady-in-waiting, so to speak, at the Southern Artic court. Lady Kana was my best friend and my soul charge. She was the Princess then, much fairer and kinder than me, she was not a bender."

"I know . . ." Katara breathed, fingers curling into the sheets of her bed.

"Yes, well, you must have met her then, before she died."

Katara turned her head slowly to look at Hama. "I received news but a month ago that she still lived, along with her son and grandson." Hama's expression turned soft again, and she smiled a little at the thought of her old friend still alive.

"Well, that's good news. I suppose I just assumed, after all these years, the last I heard from the Tribes was the Raids."

"The Raids?" Zuko asked and Katara had nearly forgotten he was even here.

Hama's expression hardened. "Yes," she hissed. "The Raids. You do know what the word 'raid' means do you not?"

The Prince's eyes gleamed with rage and he opened his mouth to retort but Katara stopped him.

"She's speaking of the Raids that took the children from the Southern Lands," she paused a moment. "The ones that took me."

They continued the rest of the session in most silence until Hama added, "It is a shame though, Queen Kya and her daughter."

"Shame," Katara mumbled. "A beautiful queen, an enamored princess, and a life that had not yet breathed."

"What?"

"The Queen, the Queen was pregnant when they slaughtered her." The words were bitter on her tongue and she buried her face into her pillow to cut off whatever else they might think to say to her. She slips into unconsciousness as quickly as one does under fragile ice.

* * *

"Are you done?" The Prince's voice was cold and direct.

"Yes, I've done all I can." Hama's voice matches his venom perfectly and her hands ghost over Katara's back, trailing a thin hazy frost in their wake to numb the remaining burning. "She should be all right, undamaged and beautiful, _to your liking_." He voice lowered dangerously and she heard the Prince's sharp intake of breath.

"She is the King's Mistress,"

"Ah, yes, but she does not like him—from what I hear," Sarcasm drips from her tone as blood does from a wound. "Word get around, come now don't make that face. You looked oh so worried earlier when you walked in and saw her."

"I know not of what you speak, woman."

"Oh, but you do," Hama hissed and Katara could imagine her snarling in disgust. "You Egyptian men are all the same, a little exotic coloring and coyness and you're sold. Do this girl a favor and set her up on the next ship to Ingis-Aqua, she'd have a better chance of life there."

"The annexation?"

"At least there she can be with her own people. Do you honestly think they do not practice still in the colonies? You are mistaken, Prince, that I assure you of." Hama snorted. "And there are other men there, tribesmen of the North who she might luckily catch the eye of, then she could go live with him, marry and start a family of a new generation. That is how this should be done; this girl is not a pawn for your use."

"What's this Hama? You defend one of your own?" The Prince's voice was acidic, but desperate, as if he were trying to veer Hama off the topic and get a rise out of her.

"Yes," Hama said flatly. "Yes, I am. She is of my homeland and may very well be of my kin for all I know. She means as much to me as she ever will mean to you."

"Oh, I doubt that." Zuko hissed and for a moment there's a silence that fills the air like mercury, slowly eating at the mind. "Get out, now. Your people are waiting for you at the gate."

"Hn, so nice of you to let an old woman go free." Hama snorted again and her hand fell again to Katara's shoulder, before she knelt to her again. "Don't lose your heart girl," the crone whispered to her ear. "It's a slippery slope and the only way is down."

"Go!" the Prince roared and then Hama was gone, like the night bending to the day except never to be seen again.

* * *

Hours later, when she finally 'came to' she found the Prince was sitting beside her cot, watching her sleep. His eyes were a muddled golden color and heavy bags hung under his eyes, like two dark smudges across his pale marble face.

"How are your injuries?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know, you tell me." Katara muttered back, still sleepy from her extended nap.

"Nearly gone, Hama has done well."

"Who was she?" Katara asked suddenly the memories of last night coming back to her. "Hama, I mean, does Ozai know of her? How'd you find another Waterbender?"

"Hama . . . well, it's complicated really. She's under my Uncle's protection, she lives in the Wasteland, but whenever someone of the royal blood may need her at their beckon call, she must appear with the moon and go with the sun, as the story goes."

Katara's head hurt. "She's a spirit?"

"No, she's a crone. An old one that needs to die, but she has her uses. Just, no one in the capitol can know that she still lives."

"Alright . . ." Katara groaned and reached behind herself to feel her back, smooth like a healed scar, probably a shade or two lighter than her actual skin.

"Hama said you should try walking by midday . . ." Zuko said, eyes not exactly meeting hers and Katara gave him a weary look. His hair was down, long and shaggy like a farm boy's, hanging over his forehead and down the nap of his neck.

"How are you?" she asked.

His jaw slacked, lips parting. "Well enough," he answered quickly, expression quickly becoming guarded again.

"That reassures me not." She mumbled.

"Good thing you have no need to be." The Prince stood with one fluid motion, brushing his robes back with a flourish worthy of the highest aristocracy. When the robe brushed back, in that brief moment, Katara's eyes caught a flash of the white flesh of the Prince's torso. It was nothing she had not seen before; his body was sinewy with muscle, pale like porcelain but the resemblance of anything delicate ended there, but there was something wrapped about his midsection.

"Tui and La—" Katara lashed outward, grabbing a fistful of the velvet robe in her hand and anchoring the Prince in place. She pulled at the robe again, brushing it back to the thick gauze that wrapped around his torso. Blossoms of red bled through the white of the bandages in a diagonal slash from his left rib to his right hip. "What . . . ?"

She watched the Prince's stomach cave with a quick breath and slowly inhaled, which looked nothing less than painful. Words began to tumble from her mouth.

"What happened to you?"

"Katara, I don't want you to worry about that. You need to get better—for the King."

"Tell me what happened. Now." She paused. "Did . . . was Lu Ten still, oh—"

"Katara," the Prince said sternly, his hand laid across hers—barely grazing her wrist—and pulled his robe back. "Lu Ten is—I handled it. Just rest, you've had a long night and the King will be here shortly."

Her head was spinning.

"Tell me the truth."

"Leave it alone."

"Don't leave—" The words caught in her throat and suddenly she was reaching for his robe again. "Tell me what happened. I told you about the Raids. You tell me why you're bleeding."

The Prince gave her a look like she had gone mad.

"Now is not the time for—"

"Please . . ." The Prince's expression twisted into something akin to horror. "Zuko."

"Good night, Katara." He disappeared back behind the curtain and drawing it closed slowly behind him.

* * *

**Hama is my favorite character, EVER.**

**Sorry my muse gold fish died, I went and bought a new one.**

**gah, I'm gonna puke. Bad writing and feeling sick and dry contacts, not good. On the bright side I think I've finally got a hold on Katara's and Zuko's romantic waves for this story . . . and a convinent way to get rid of pizza I don't want. (I threw it in my neighbor's yard because they're REALLY bad at watching their kids and they keep breaking into our backyard and going swimming when we're not home and then there was that time they had a party and I found the school manwhore scaling my fence only to land in a pile of dog poop . . . and then got attacked by my dogs and yelled at me to call them off. He won't mess with my friends anymore.)**

**My grandmother's been visiting and quizzing me on my German (German-Slovanian-Irish-Italian, melting pot heiratage. Danke.) and accomplishments and high school career because the women in my family are measured by how strong/smart they are mentally. If you're strong, you're golden. If you're not, well . . . no one's gonna listen to you. I resemble all the male members of my family (my late Grandpa Bill and my even later Grandpa Rudy) so I'm apparently a cranky, hell-bent, slightly psychotic, girl who loves cheetos, road trips, leather jackets, people and old music: which I do/am. **

**But if I'm also among the few of my family to finish high school and go to college I'm good.**

**Notes:**

**Next Chapter: will be a recap from Zuko's pov**

**There Growing Relationship: Because I'm sketchy, I'll make their romance build up sketchy and fully "did you just?" and "hate (love) you so much". And I got VERY emotionally unstabily upset again and just started writing through tears again.**

**More Bending: There will be more bending! More magical, wonderful awesomeness. I just saw _Oz: The Great and Powerful _and ohmigod, thank you Hollywood for not screwing up my most prominate, beautiful childhood memory. **

* * *

**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **Father and son, a bond that can't be broken, but can be burned.

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**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


	24. Chapter 24

_**Nights in Egypt**_

_**Chapter Twenty-Four**_**: First Blood**

* * *

_I'll take care of it, _he had said. Said it so quickly he had not given himself a chance to doubt, a chance to jump to her aid, a chance to make himself useful to her. He had not even thought: he was sending himself to find, collect, and bury one of the few people he held dear to him. His beloved cousin whom he was so close to and shared everything with.

Why would he bend so easily to Katara's will?

She had not even asked him, but she knew as well as he their only other option was to let the body be found and send the palace into another bout of panic. And that would not do, they were running on thin ice. They needed to make their move on the King now, and soon.

_Now that she's injured, we'll have to wait longer. _He mourned the thought, but wasn't as upset about the loss of time as he ought to be. He feared more for Katara.

Katara. Katara. Lu Ten.

The chilling, forbidden thoughts raced through his mind—the dark side in all of them, the bloody wars fought while his people idly fretted over Sunday brunches, and Katara's story. Mainly, Katara's story. Everything. Every complex piece of her life she'd painted for him in his mind—the grace of her people and then the bloody downfall. And then there was Lu Ten—

"I don't believe it," he said aloud and the words echoed in his ear, ricocheting back with a powerful roar that formed into a hand clutching tightly at his chest.

It was so hard to . . . he could not imagine—he _would not _imagine—Lu Ten who had been like a brother to him . . . doing something so, so, _vile_—_horrifying, despicable, _there were no _words _to describe this—to a woman. Not even a woman, a girl, a child! She was only a few years younger than Zuko! An exact year from Azula! How could he? How _dare _he?

His mind raced with thoughts that were mangled and bloody in the air like a thousand swinging corpses, lynched up and left to rot. He decided all at once that if Katara had not finished the job on Lu Ten, he would himself.

He turned into the garden, finding the shadowy pathway he had walked a thousand times before while he clenched and unclenched his fists, stemming the tiny fires that sparked against his fingertips in the darkness.

_Calm, _he thought to himself. _Calm. _The telltale glimmer of water under moonlight caught his gaze and fire roared in his palms, nipping, and then consuming the gold silk sleeves of his dressing robes, catching the glint of his silvery gold, armor chest plate.

_Kill him and show no mercy. Burn him to a crisp. Lock his ashes away, do not let them filter through the wind. _

All of a sudden, the Prince stopped short.

The flames quelled against his skin and the cool night wafted against his heat, sending an array of leaves from the branches into the air around him.

Zuko stared at the pond before him—fringed with ice at the edge where the water lapped at the frosty green grass—and stared into the dark abyss that reflected a half moon. There was no body to be found.

* * *

The Prince lingered in the corridor of the royal guest wing—a broad hall filled lavishing decorated suites for those whom the royal family wished to impress with the finest (or second finest) silks, woods, art and furniture. Guests were the coming and going sort, and although his cousin _was _the prince of first blood, his uncle's decision to forfeit his throne made Lu Ten no better than one of the royal's guests with few special benefits. Therefore, he had a pertinent residency apartment, dressed with his belongings and maps and novelties from his travels.

All around him his private guard was tearing up for signs of life and he was staring at the top drawer of his cousin's bureau.

A single guard stepped towards it, meaning to open it—_never go in there, _Lu Ten said withdrawn brows and a commanding voice that moved militias of men—and Zuko shoved the guard away with a forceful hand and a glare.

This was _his. _Only he would see what Lu Ten was hiding in here.

He waited as his guard nominated the room was clear and began to move further into the apartment before he even thought of opening it.

_Come on, _he dared himself.

He had, since he was young, always wondered what Lu Ten held inside this tiny drawer. Maps? Jewels? Toys from childhood? But he had respected his cousin enough never to invade what little privacy they, as royal children, were allowed.

He felt he had the right to know now.

His fingers wrapped around the crystal handle and yanked the drawer open before he could talk himself out of it. Peering inside he found a mess of cloth that he disentangled and tossed aside on the floor. Dressing robes, dressing robes, undergarments, silk fabric, and single canvas slipper with knotted laces—hardly the things of secrecy.

Zuko scratched at the bureau for a false bottom. Nothing.

He moved to open the drawer wider to check the back, but it caught on something. He moved the drawer reflexively back and forth and stuck his hand inside, feeling along the top until his fingers brushed against something soft and warm, like animal fur. At first, he felt the reflex to pull his hand away, but then realized that it wasn't alive; his fingers wrapped around it, prying it from the corner with his nails until it fell into his hand.

It was a satchel, a tiny one that would carry something like small stones or jewelry. As he felt before it was furry too. It was of no animal that lived in Egypt since saber-tooth rats tended to be much too sinewy to make anything out of their meager hides. His fingers felt along the draw strings of the bag, touching the blue painted, bone and tooth beads. _It's from Katara's land._

Without another moment's hesitation, the Prince tore at the draw strings and reached inside, pulling out a silk wrapped trinket.

There, wrapped in moth eaten silk, rested a choker necklace. The jewel on the choker was blue, carved with a delicate design of waves intertwining with a full belly moon. The rest of the design was indiscreet markings that wrote out words to a language the Prince did not understand and additional detailing etched into the waves and moon.

He touched it—feeling the cool stone and every ridge carved from the maker and the rough fabric of the choker. His thumb traced over his forefinger, chipping off a crust of something brown—dried blood.

"What are you doing?"

Zuko shoved the necklace into his robe pocket before whirling around expecting to find a very angry and confused and half-dead Lu Ten, when really it was his very angry and confused and more so alive father—and all the nobles.

He was standing oddly tall, proud and pampered as ever, he looked like the man he'd grown up seeing his entire life—abnormally pressed with a godly aura around him. The same aura his sister tried to replicate. He was smiling but there was no warmth to it.

"My Son," Ozai's voice was bowstring taunt, ready to snap at any moment. The formality and vocal recognition of which he was to him always made the Pharaoh tense.

"Father," Zuko said, doing his best to collect himself. "Lu Ten has gone missing."

"Missing?" the King said skeptically, raising a brow towards the rooms around them, looking like they'd just been plundered by the King's Guard themselves. "And you have taken it upon yourself to search for him in his dressing tables . . . are you sure you are not confusing 'missing' with 'hide-and-seek'?"

The nobles laughed and Zuko flared.

"He's missing," he repeated. "I was searching for clues as to where he may be."

"Perhaps your cousin is abed in another room? Oh, my Son, have you not know of the liaisons of the court? You're such a sheltered boy. I thought we had this talk long ago." A few more chuckles sounded behind him and Zuko's teeth gridded. He resisted the urge to tell his father that it was Lu Ten who injured Katara last night, not a rove guard. Perhaps then he'd have the resources to find his cousin and _maim _him.

"I would not search if I did not think it serious, my lord." He said, keeping his voice perfectly even and smooth as silk, something he learnt from his days in court.

"It matters not what you think since you obviously lack conviction from right and wrong—like the child you are." He spat and all playfulness from his voice was gone.

"You are right, I'm sorry, my King," he said, swallowing his pride and the fire in his voice and wanted to cut his tongue out right then and there.

That's when he remembers the party from last night. It felt so long ago, years away. Long gone from his mother's now catatonic state and Katara's ruined one.

He had to get away from Ozai, fast.

"Your mother pleaded with me to give you a chance," Ozai drawled, ignoring him and the nobles began to shuffle back from the room with a wave of his hand. "I left you in charge of the banquet last night. You're Uncle Jeor said you showed great diplomacy and conviction along with a gently raised hand here and there—old sot said you reminded him of your mother. However, it seemed that my teachings shown through, with our common goals. I would praise you, but—" The Pharaoh's smile turned down at the corners. "You _left _the banquet early, and after Mistress Katara no less."

Zuko paled.

"Well, my son," The door closed slowly behind Ozai; signaling that they were, completely, alone. "If Lu Ten has been disposed of for the moment, I do not think he will mind me exercising my abilities—doctor's orders, I'm sure you understand."

Twin flames surged in the Pharaoh's palms and Zuko took a step back.

* * *

The Prince was used to burns, they marred his flesh and became one with him, melding into his skin like tattoos he never wanted and scars that bleed with color and make his skin too sensitive and too taunt. _Breathe, just breathe, _as he laid there bleeding into the flagstone floor he forced his lungs to take in air.

The new burns spanned across his chest over his heart and stomach. The deepest of them was bleeding a diagonal slash across his abdomen—wound given from a blade of fire.

_Move, move, you have to move. Get up. _

Days could have passed before his eyes and he would not have known.

* * *

His wounds stopped bleeding hours later, crusting blood across his stomach and his skin was shiny from the burns, but he was healing quickly enough—had he not been a Firebender things would have been much worse. His skin pulled and bled and he pulled his burned clothes around himself, ambling his way through the halls trailing blood and half aware of where he was going.

"My lord?" He glanced up, catching the gaze of the healer from the infirmary and sighed. "My lord, you are injured . . . come over here, away from the girl."

He glanced around finding Katara's pain stricken face as she slept with her wounds bandaged and bleeding still. They said Waterbenders bleed like the water they bended, quick and perfuse. In older times, his great-great-grandfather had a slew of Waterbenders brought to him and had skewered them on pyres and watched their watery blood fill fountains.

He sat on a cot, taking medicine and allowing himself to be bandaged while the physician prattled on about the new medicine he created for burns, how it enhanced the Firebender's chi and allowed the be become less susceptible to their wounds from their own element.

"Have you given it to her?" He asked.

"Well, my lord—"

"She's still bleeding." He murmured.

"She's alright, my lord, we will do everything in our power—" Calling what he had left of his strength, the Prince lunged upward and shoved him against the wall beside the bed, knocking over the side table and sending the tools and bandages across the floor.

"Why . . . aren't you doing . . . everything you can already?" he asked in heaved breaths, fire sparking to his fingertips.

"She refuses all our treatments, m-my lord." The physician's eyes were wide and wary, flickering between the flames and his face as if not sure which was more menacing.

"_Why_?" He hissed.

"She-she says she deserves it, my lord."

But she doesn't.

* * *

With his estrange cousin possibly alive and still at large, he had around the clock guards placed at the infirmary doors and stayed to guard the secret passage way himself. Meanwhile, he played with the necklace he found in Lu Ten's bureau drawer, touching the cool stone and the carvings, staring at the engraved words and trying to interoperate the meanings of the symbols.

Who had it belonged to? Katara?

Had Lu Ten kept it as a memorabilia of her?

He stared at her and tried to imagine the necklace new, her wearing it and smiling, but the image seemed too far off to comprehend.

_Katara, _he watched her sleep for the passing hours trying to think of someway to help her, to save her. If she refused all Fire Nation treatments then she may respond to one from her own lands, or somewhere farther.

There was one whom he could call on.

* * *

Nights in the deserts are always cold and, far from civilization, darkness reigns supreme but there is one assemblage of people who thrive in this cold darkness. They are called the _roma_, more commonly known as gypsies—and they do tend to take offense to the term—and for their trade of being able to rob someone dead, blind, and worse with a twist of their wrist. They're a nomadic sort of people, and very difficult to find in their adapted harsh environments.

The Prince had seen them only once in his life, sitting aboard his uncle's privately owned ship after his 'betrayal' to his father; the left side of his face was burned and bleeding, he often wore a cloak hiding his shame now. When the boat docked in the southern ring of the capitol, Zuko was taken to the outskirts of the city, his uncle led him and a single guard across the sandy environs like he was following a map inside his head, knowing where to step and turn until a collection of colorful tents and wagons began to dot their horizon.

Walking through the camp, he felt an odd sense of peace in their ranks—such was their nature as thieves, he suspected, drawing people into false senses of security—but some watched him warily as if he were a threat. Pulling their children aside and cowering back when they met his yellow eyes.

"The _roma _are proud people, they fault no one," his uncle had said and they passed a tent where a small family sat outside. There was a couple so obviously from the Lands of Earth, with dark hair and fine, smooth skin, but the beauty of it was marred with ugly burn marks the splattered across their delicate skin from their faces to their ankles. A little girl sat at their feet, dark-haired, pale, and staring on with wide unseeing eyes. "But the lands in which they come from fault them."

Zuko shivered as they passed.

"It's been a long time, old man," his uncle was greeted with a snide, smiling woman with silver eyes. She lived in a wagon at the center of the camp, surrounded by rove looking youths with weapons and elderly with the same pale-eyed, dark-haired features as she.

Hama was a healer, the best in the entire nation, and she could do nothing to take away fully Zuko's burn—only to lessen it. "It will be a scar, an ugly reminder." She had said once she finished; the bleeding and damaged tissue gone, his eye was fuzzy at first but now clear as day. "It's as if it were meant to be there," She said in her unnervingly serene voice.

His uncle was the one who thanked her.

"So, she is ours to call upon?" Zuko had asked on the way home.

"She's not your slave Zuko," Iroh quipped, making the young prince jump. The sharpness of his voice was direct, clean and cut like a razor, imbedding the lesson into his mind. "Lady Hama is a free woman of this nation. Who she is—she is like a spirit, a source of guidance. She will heal whomever is injured if she so chooses that would plea is clear enough to be heard."

With these thoughts in mind, the Prince pressed his quill to his paper and hoped he sounded urgent enough.

* * *

A boy slunk out from the darkness, shadows clinging to his black attire. Hee tossed his hood back in one fluid motion, his eyes were dark as well; and the only feature Zuko could see beyond the cloth covering the lower half of his mouth. The gypsy boy met his gaze and squared his shoulders, sizing up the Prince as if he already was a threat.

Zuko was unimpressed.

"Is Hama with you?" Zuko asked and the boy's jaw tensed beneath the covering.

"Lady Hama is approaching," he muttered and stepped aside for the gypsy queen to pass him in an obvious show of respect. Per usual, Hama made her origins desecrate in her wardrobe. The shades of skirts mixed between red and blue, creating a regal violet, the detailing of flames here's went into her clothes that, when looked the right way, we're truly wave patterns. Her hair was silvery grey, knotted into a hasty topknot with a collection of beads dangling from the ends of her tasseled braids and delicate combs stuck into the knot like a crown.

Her cat-like silvery blue eyes met his and not for the first time Zuko wondered what she looked like young and beautiful.

"Hama," Zuko nodded, but not too low, he didn't want to deal with Hama's bantering this evening. "Your reputation precedes you, you're right on time."

Hama's lips turn down into the furrows. "I made a deal with a young prince once, for my gifts I am allowed to live freely and that's all I require—at the moment, of course," She said almost to herself and her eyes fall to Zuko's torso. "My, my, by your letter you made it sound so urgent." She teased and her gaze flickered back to his scarred face. "Or is your 'mark of shame' bothering you again?"

"I did not call you here for me," he said sternly and tried not to lash out. "Come along."

The gypsy boy took a step forward and Zuko halted. "No guards."

"Then your intended patient shall die." The boy cut in, hand reaching for his back where two hook-like weapons criss-crossed against his shoulders and makeshift armor.

Hama's bony hand lashed out, wrapping in a vice around the boy's wrist and halting him from drawing his weapon. "Do not try to out best me, Jetediah," she said frostily and sparks of ice crept at the cuff of his sleeve. He yanked his arm away. "I am more powerful than you here, the moon is filling."

The Prince spared a glance towards the moon to see the Hama was correct—waxing moon, with a diluted milky halo circling it's nearly circular form.

"Yes, my apologizes," he muttered while holding his arm close to him like a wounded animal. He gripped at his injured wrist in his free one, trying to warm it. The silk green of the armguards he wore stood out starkly against the black night.

"Do not worry; she will be back when the job is finished." Zuko tore his gaze away and continued towards the back door of the kitchens. "Come, this way."

Hama stepped in line with him, her heavy body and tiny feet creating little to no sound against the flagstone floors.

* * *

As he suspected, Hama _had _antagonized him throughout the process of healing Katara's back. The entirety of the session revolved around how Katara got the wounds, where she was from, why she was here and the time he set her skirt on fire when he was twelve and she'd just healed him—she hated him on sight anyway, there was no loss of love.

Zuko watched Hama work, healing and gently petting and cooing to Katara whilst she slept.

In Hama's eyes, Katara was a precious gem—never to be worn, touched, or shown. And she had even had the braveries to demand that Katara be sent to the Fire Nation colony where she could be with her own people. He'd snarled at that.

_When she's home, she'll be much happier. _He'd thought, not thinking twice to it and having his mind all made up on the subject.

Hama was leaning close to Katara, smoothing her shoulder and whispering to her—unkind things about him probably. "Out!" he yelled and the Waterbender smirked at him, and pastied towards the door.

"And the best of luck two you too," she murmured and was gone into the night. "Until next time . . ."

* * *

Her eyes are bright against the darkness of her skin, shining with their own ethereal light in the shadowy infirmary. Once she opened them, he caught his breath counting the colors. Mesmerized as he was before when they first met. "How are your injuries?" he asked gently.

She blinked a few times; face scrunching in confusion before her eyes settled on him. She took a low, labored breath. "I don't know, you tell me."

"Nearly gone," He inspected the burns on her back critically. "Hama has done well."

"Who was she?" Katara asked with a sudden desperation in her voice. Her eyes were wide and suddenly awake now. "Hama, I mean—does Ozai know of her? How'd you find another Waterbender?"

He knew he'd have to explain some time.

"Hama . . . well, it's complicated really. She's under my Uncle's protection, she lives in the Wasteland, but whenever someone of the royal blood may need her at their beckon call, she must appear with the moon and go with the sun, as the story goes."

Katara's eyes narrowed. "She's a spirit?"

_I would have her exorcised then. _He thought wryly.

"No, she's a crone. An old one that needs to die, but she has her uses. Just, no one in the capitol can know that she still lives."

"Alright . . ." Katara leant back and touched the skin of her back, smooth beneath her fingers. Her eyes widened as she craned her neck around to look.

"Hama said you should try walking by midday . . ." Zuko informed.

"How are you?" she asked suddenly and Zuko unconsciously touched the bandages beneath his robe.

"Well enough,"

"That reassures me not."

"Good thing you have no need to be." He brushed his robes back to stand.

"Tui and La—" Katara reached out, grabbing a fistful of his robe in her hand and pulling him back to her, she struggled to sit up. Pain flashed across her face and her fingers grazed the knife of fire wound slashing across his torso. "What? What happened to you?"

"Katara," he said with as much authority as he could muster. "I do not want you to worry about that. You need to get better—" he paused. "For the King."

_There, _he thought. Remembering the reason of her being here in the first place helped. She was not here for him, not at all, not truly. She was here to fulfill their agreement. She was to learn bending, lure in his father, kill him, and be shipped back to the lands she originated from. _As she should be._

He thought of the truth in Hama's words and the effect of Lu Ten's actions. The Lands of Fire were not safe for her, not at all.

He withdraws into himself, saying what needs to be said and tucking away whatever he want to say. He bids her goodnight and left her behind in the shadowy room.

* * *

**I will fix all spelling mistakes later, right now though I shall sleep and cuss myself out in the morning. (took me three tries to spell that, see?)**

**Alright, I am very sorry for the delay but look at it this way: everything after this (mostly) is pre-written! Just a bunch of editing ahead and three updates or more a month because seriously people schools ending soon and I'm about ready to shoot somebody if they look at me the wrong way. And I'm gonna miss the seniors. Not all of them, but most. Mostly most. And I am now working two jobs . . . this shoudl be fun.**

**Anyways, thank you to **akadelilah1996 **for cornering me at school and asking me when I'm updating next and making me feel awesome ;D. Read her stories, so far they are very good. And my neighbor Brianne who spent the last three hours with me while I wrote this, playing Zelda and spitballing ideas with me. Thank you both, you are crazy and I love that about you.**

**And thank all of you for putting up with my moods.**

**Notes:**

***Zuko I think I might shoot you. What do you guys think?**

***This is a basic recap chap from Zuko's pov because a lot happened on his end too. With the necklace and his father and Lu Ten missing.**

***Lu Ten's body's missing! AHAHAH!**

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**NEXT TIME ON: _Nights of Egypt_: **Egypt will forever live up to it's reputation of complexity, one mystery after another. The Rebel card shall always change the rules of the game, bringing forth intrigue and a new slew of questions as well as answers.

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**Review me, tell me if you have a question! Reviews make me update faster! I must have at least ten!**

**~QueenVamp**


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